


Ares and Vulcan

by Captain_Panda



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Steve Rogers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Character Death Fix, Communication, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Fatherhood, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentioned Ancient Roman Gods, Mesopotamian Mythology - Freeform, POV Steve Rogers, Parent Tony Stark, Parenthood, Past Relationship(s), Post-Loss, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Slow Build, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Team as Family, They Are Going To Get A Happy Ending So Help Me, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Variations on Ancient Egyptian Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 22:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 41,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29500002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Panda/pseuds/Captain_Panda
Summary: I am the god of war.  And I’m here to fight the mad Titan Thanos.When Tony Stark dies, Steve Rogers does the only rational thing a guy with six Infinity Stones and unfinished business would: he transcends.And gets the guy, but that comes later.AnEndgameGreek god fusion. Because time travel.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) & Tony Stark, Nick Fury & Steve Rogers, Nick Fury & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Steve Rogers & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers & Avengers Team, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Tony Stark & Avengers Team
Comments: 25
Kudos: 43





	Ares and Vulcan

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone's favorite time! Warnings in the notes!  
> WARNINGS IN THE NOTES
> 
> This is an _Endgame_ fix-it fic. Here there be: **Canonical MCD, Non-Canon MCD, and Ambiguous Relationships.**
> 
> This fic is Stony (Steve/Tony) "endgame." But, per its canon roots, there will be mentions of Pepperony (Pepper/Tony). Since Tony and Pepper are married in canon, for a relationship to develop between Steve and Tony, this fic comes in close contact with infidelity. This fic does _not_ , I repeat _not_ , endorse or depict actual infidelity, as is elaborated on in hopefully excruciatingly detail further into the narrative.
> 
> This fic also features ancient god elements (and bastardizations). It is not meant to be an accurate retelling; rather, it is an ambiguous story meant to capture the "spirit" of the characters. However, there are a few references to "canonical" Greek god myths, including one off-screen, non-MCU rape. This warning is as graphic as the in-text allusion, but it felt cruel not to mention it.
> 
> OK, that's all for the warnings, have a blast! This took three hours just to POST.
> 
> Your delighted Captain,  
> -Panda

“No amount of money ever bought a second of time.”

– ~~Howard  
~~

Tony Stark

_“Honestly, I miss being_ Daddy _. Best thing I ever did was have a kid.” Tony Stark turned to look at Steve Rogers, both of them in their charred and mangled suits. Tony looked—so infinitely weary. “Worst thing I ever did was meet you, but. Steppingstones. Can’t have one without the other.” There was real grief in his voice as he said, “Never meet your heroes. They’re doomed to disappoint you.”_

_Throat tight with unspoken emotion, Steve replied, “I’m sorry, Tony.”_

_“That’s about. . . .” Tony parodied checking his watch, “Seven years too late? It’s too late, buddy.” He sighed, then took another step towards the abyss. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why, but I am. Maybe—I don’t think you’re actually a bad person. I think you’re just—lost. Like I was. And the world is going to chew you up and spit you out, Cap. So, go make something,” he commanded. “Make something of your life.”_

Steve awoke. At first, he wasn’t sure why. Then he heard the quiet sobbing downstairs. He shut his eyes wearily.

For ten long seconds, Steve let the silence and stillness press down on him. 

_We’ve got all the time in the world, Cap_ , Dr. Banner had told him. _Let’s take a night. Then you can return the Stones_.

It was hard to believe how much had changed in a twelve-hour period. He could still hear Thor’s laughter, bent out of shape, overjoyed but devastated. An immortal, who had witnessed fifteen hundred years of joy and suffering, giving his cue for them, to laugh, to weep.

Steve was silent, tears accumulating like blood welling to the surface of a wound. There was no stopping them. Why should he?

Finally, the cadence of soft sobbing drew him out of bed.

He was surprised to find Tony Stark’s daughter sitting near the base of the stairs. She looked up as he neared her on almost-silent footsteps and held up a hand to shush him. She was young, maybe five, maybe six. Steve didn’t know the exact timeline because Tony hadn’t told him. “Hey,” he greeted. “What’re you doin’ up?”

She looked at him like he was being obtuse. “Mommy,” she said, and his heart hurt anew.

He already knew, from the pitch and quality, who it was. Hell, without any audible input at all, he could make an educated guess who might already be breaking down under the strain of losing the last—and greatest—Stark.

Steve intended to proceed directly to her, offer what meager comfort he could. He eased himself down onto the stairs near the girl—Morgan; her name was Morgan—instead. “How’re you?” he asked.

She looked at him strangely, like he was something out of a storybook, a stranger she didn’t know but knew she could trust. A lot of people looked at him like that, but it was still strangest of all to see it on the face of someone so young. “I’m cold,” she admitted, hugging her knees. “I want Daddy.”

Steve held out an arm. It was a pathetic gift next to her father, but it was what he had at his disposal. Morgan shuffled over, tucking herself against his side.

“Mommy’s sad,” Morgan said, slowly, carefully. “Because Daddy’s gone.” Steve looked down at her, marveling at the—humbling, awesome presence beside him. _The next Stark_. “I want Daddy,” she said again, as young as her age. “Where is he?”

Of all things, Steve had the sudden, inescapable image of himself in a skin-tight uniform stepping onto a platform, looking into the soulless black lens, and declaring: “So. You’ve lost someone. Believe me—I know what that’s like.” He paused, unblinking, making sure the kids that would hear his message _heard_ his message. “Now, I’m not gonna lie to you and say everything’s gonna be okay right away. Nobody is so strong they can stand alone, and when we lose one of our pillars—it hurts. It’s gonna hurt for a long time. That’s why we need support. Reaching out is one of the best things you can do for yourself. No one wants you to walk this journey alone. . . .”

Morgan looked up at him hopefully. Steve inhaled slowly, exhaled slowly.

“Your Dad did something really brave,” he said. “The bravest thing a person can do.” Morgan looked at him, rapt. “He helped save—a lot of people. Including you. And your Mom.” Steve thought of his own father, a man he only knew from stories and a single well-studied, monochrome photograph. _You gave ‘em hell, Pa_ , he’d thought, looking at that picture, too scrawny to be enlisted but determined, regardless. _I’ll do the same. I swear_. 

“But he was. . . .” This was the part Steve always dreaded. “He was called to do something. Something big. Something so big, he couldn’t come back from it,” he said at last. Honest. Shameful. _Tony Stark never wanted to be a soldier_. “Sweetheart—” He had no right to speak kindly to Tony Stark’s daughter, not when Tony Stark wasn’t alive anymore—“he’s not coming home.”

There was a long pause. Morgan huddled more deeply against him, hiding in his shirt. Then she said softly, “I’m scared. I want Daddy.”

Steve squeezed his eyes shut. _I do, too._ It didn’t feel like a victory without Tony Stark. “It’s okay,” he said, a lie, a promise. She clung to his shirt; he picked her up, hugged her, enveloped her. He would not let her hurt on his watch, even though there was nothing he could do to stop it. “It’s okay. Shh.” She hiccupped a few times, on the edge of crying. Tears would come, eventually. Tears took time, and even if she had her father’s bright eyes, she was still a _child_. It would take time to process the loss.

Steve hadn’t even begun to, and he was still holding Morgan on his hip as he murmured, “Come on. You want some hot cocoa?” At her tentative nod, he assured softly, “Let’s make some hot cocoa.”

He heard Colonel Rhodes one room over, comforting Pepper in a murmur he tried not to hear. _We planned this_ , she whispered, barely a rasp of a breath, as Steve boiled water and rocked Morgan from side-to-side, her head on his shoulder. _We—we knew. We knew it could—happen. And it still—_

 _It’s gonna hurt. That’s just how it is_.

Steve bobbed lightly on his feet, humming a lost Irish lullaby. He focused completely on the task in front of him, and it helped. No space for the gaping voids in his life.

Morgan slept. Steve could only imagine how tired she was, a brave little soldier like her Dad, putting up with all of them stomping into her home and drafting her whole world for the fight of their lives. He had no doubt Morgan loved Pepper, intensely, immensely, but—well. He’d seen how she hung on to her Daddy’s shoulder. Tony was totally smitten, and that kind of parental adoration went both ways.

He felt the burn in his eyes only as he mixed cocoa powder and water, focusing on the lyrics to the lullaby, desperate to distract himself. The words were deep in his pre-serum memory, but the task gave him something to focus on. He could only breathe when he didn’t think about it.

Morgan slept on. Steve balanced her in one arm and carried both mugs in the other hand. 

In the living room, Colonel Rhodes had an arm around Pepper’s back. Steve knew Colonel Rhodes had dragged Tony out of fires for half their lives; seeing Tony die in front of him—

The abject misery in both their faces was too hard to look at, so Steve stared right at his hands as he offered them the cups.

Colonel Rhodes released Pepper to take his mug between two shaking hands. Pepper’s were steadier, but her _thank you_ was so whispery it was barely there.

Steve sat down in a rocker chair. Morgan slept on his shoulder. He shut his eyes briefly; he kicked back and forth gently, aware of the room. He looked at them in the darkness and spoke softly. “No amount of _I’m sorry_ is ever gonna be enough.” He rocked back, and forth. Back, and forth. “We had one chance, and we—” His own throat tightened. Back, and forth. “I failed him. I’m so sorry,” he said. It was pathetic, but he had to say it.

Pepper shut her eyes and clamped her jaw, ashen in mourning. Colonel Rhodes just held onto his mug and stared at Steve, looking for something. Anything.

Steve held that iron gaze. “It should’ve been me,” Steve said. It wasn’t self-deprecation; it was honest regret. He knew Colonel Rhodes could see it. Jim’s eyes had the same grief, the same message. “We all lose someone,” Steve went on. “But this. . . .”

 _This is home. This is family_.

It only made sense in the context of grief. Loss was a perennial part of life. Inescapable, far more present than people gave it credit for, as mundane as shifting seasons and missed opportunities. But grief—that hit _home_. That changed _everything_.

“I want to—let me hold her,” Pepper whispered, setting her mug aside and gesturing. Steve mutely passed Morgan over. The effect was immediate and staggering: Pepper relaxed into the couch with a relieved sigh, and Steve felt the weight of the world descend on his shoulders again, the magnitude of his failure twisting his heart inside his chest.

He’d been badly wounded in the— _fight of our lives_ —fight against Thanos, but he didn’t feel the pain from them. He felt numb to it all, like something had broken in him as soon as Tony Stark took his last breath. He wasn’t sure he would ever deserve to feel pain, or love, or joy again.

His composure faded like sand in an hourglass. He stood up wordlessly. There was no more time to waste.

. o .

“I know what you’re thinking,” Dr. Banner said wearily. It was easier to refer to him by his old name than his new one; _Professor Hulk_ seemed too impersonal for all they had shared. “I’ve thought about it, a lot.” Dr. Banner looked at him. 

Seated on the dock, he was huge, imposing, yet somehow diminished. Steve doubted if the Hulk was even capable of his feats of old, in his present form. He just seemed _humbled_ , in a way that wouldn’t necessarily work in their favor. _We’ve all been changed_ , he thought, wondering how the hell he was supposed to look at Nat’s quarters again, what he was supposed to say to Clint, the serial killer. It was all wrong, and he was so much a part of it. _I failed you all_. 

“The closed loop theory is—it’s comforting,” Dr. Banner said, unaware of his grim thoughts. “The idea that it all—just fits together neatly, like a jigsaw puzzle. You can solve it in a different order, but the final picture looks the same. Every time.” He kicked a huge foot gently in the water. “Problem is, if you’re wrong, you know what that means, Cap.” He looked up at Steve, his expression genuinely mournful. “I lost—two of the most important people in my life, today. I don’t think I have much left.”

The implication was clear. _Stay._

Steve said, “And if it’s not closed?”

Dr. Banner exhaled. “Open-loop. Alternative universes. Whatever the hell you want to call it.” Agitated, Dr. Banner said with unexpected bluntness, “Means you shit on your family. Why should we come along?” Dr. Banner looked steadily at him, human eyes in a half-human face. “To you, it’d all be the same. Same _us_. But _we’re_ still here. You leave, we stay. You build paradise—we’re stuck here. In our lonely, broken universe.” Grimly, Dr. Banner finished, “You’d never know the difference. That’s the real kicker. You’d never even know which universe you were in.”

Mountainous shoulders slouching, Dr. Banner was still and quiet for a few moments. Then he pushed himself upright. “I want you to try,” he said at last, like it pained him to put out into the open such a dark secret. _I want you to wreck the universe._ “Best case scenario—nothing changes.”

. o .

“So, that’s it, then.”

Steve looked over at Clint Barton, former friend and brother-in-arms. He looked like he’d fought a thousand-year-long war for nothing. Steve knew exactly how he felt. “You’re leaving,” Barton explained, nodding at the briefcase in Steve’s hand.

“I have to,” Steve said simply.

“Alone?” That was Thor. Steve was surprised to see Thor Odinsson, stepping out of the dark woods. Already, there was a difference in his bearing, a confidence that wasn’t there before. He alone could survive this, Steve thought. It would take a long time, but Thor _had_ time. None of them did—they would die before they ever came to terms with what had happened. “Let me ask you—what is a king with no kingdom?” Thor asked him.

Steve—didn’t know what to say. “Desperate,” he said at last.

Thor nodded in agreement. “You are wise beyond your years,” he allowed.

That meant a lot, coming from Thor. 

“Or stupid as hell,” Barton chimed in.

It was almost like old times. Deep, philosophical conversations broken up with crude remarks about their character. The goal was to make ‘em laugh. They used to laugh with each other. Steve didn’t know when, exactly, it had stopped, but his soul had felt very quiet for eight years.

It was past time to do this. “I’m sorry,” he offered them.

“Were you the one who wielded the sword that struck down my people?” Thor asked benignly, comfortingly. It might have been a joke, in another universe—if the narrative weren’t so dire. _Half of Asgard—the most indestructible people in the universe—gone. Wiped out. By Thanos_. The halting report from Dr. Banner still hadn’t captured the magnitude of the event; there was no simply no way to describe what it was like, to lose that much. “Were you the one who fled before his hoards?” Thor pressed, voice unwavering.

In the moonlight, he was particularly ethereal, eyes almost silver. It was clear that he had stopped grieving each grain of sand lost to the shifting tides of war, yet, in some way, he recognized the magnitude of Natasha’s and Tony’s deaths. _We’re the Avengers._

 _We can . . . bust arms’ dealers all the live-long-day, but that up there—that’s the endgame_.

Tony must have known. Tony was always _that good_ , eerily prescient. He knew things would snowball into catastrophe. They called him paranoid when he saw their ghosts.

 _I miss busting arms’ dealers_ , Steve thought.

And then Clint Barton said, “I won’t ask you to do the right thing. I know you will.” His voice didn’t waver, but it went slightly higher, strained. “I’ve got red in my ledger, Cap,” he said, chin up, eyes dark, anguish on full display. “I want you to wipe it out.”

Steve held his gaze a long moment, thinking of the reports— _this isn’t just grief, this is—cold-blooded murder._ It had been the elephant-in-the-room, prior to their _time heist_. Now, it felt like a man begging for mercy. _I fucked up. And there is no goddamn un-fucking it_.

Clint had always been crude, bold, brash. Steve still hadn’t seen his rampage coming.

He wished he had. That he’d stepped up for one goddamn second, instead of—

_Grieving?_

To his horror, a third voice snuck up on them: “Didn’t realize we were having a powwow.”

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes had certainly seen better days. He had, unfortunately, also seen a lot worse. “Bucky,” Steve started, but his throat stopped up completely, and Bucky held up a hand, anyway.

“I already heard,” he said, neither absolving nor driving the decision. “Good luck, kid.”

Steve couldn’t leave it there. “I’m not leaving you.” He looked around, met everybody’s eyes, once. “Any of you.”

“If you say it three more times in front of a mirror, it’ll come true,” Clint deadpanned.

Thor offered tamely, “You will be missed.”

“Go,” Bucky urged, like he could sense Steve wavering—he surely could, his senses nearly as refined as Steve’s. The winter soldier program had never attained the same marvelous heights as the super-soldier serum, but decades of brutal training had filed down the edge to near-perfection. He was a war machine, unlike any other seen in history. 

And he was not the man Steve had lost on a train. Seventy years of separation and reconfiguration had ensured that. “Get lost, punk.” He said it like Steve was about to chase a girl or just head home after an exhausting night on the town while he, himself, lingered in the darkness, the quiet, for a few more moments. Those weirdly human moments had never lingered long in Steve’s foggy, pre-serum memory, but the contrast was so stark it physically hurt to look away from him, like he was a joyful apparition that would disappear.

“I have to do this,” Steve said, not even meaning to, gaze fixed on the dark woods. He had to return the Stones. At the very least, keeping them all in one place tempted future kings and Titans to try their hand at redesigning the universe. Destroying them wasn’t a good option, either—it was the same event that spurred the time heist. Somewhere, somehow, they might be needed again. Whether the multiverse was closed or open didn’t matter—there were only six Infinity Stones at any given moment. An argument in favor of the improbable: closed-loop.

“Nobody’s arguing with you, Cap,” Clint said simply. “There are my people and I must go.”

It felt like betrayal. It felt like goddamn cowardice. _Leave us behind so you can find your happy ending?_

It felt like—

Stepping off a bridge.

He saw the silhouette near the lake before he realized he’d been looking for it. He set the briefcase down, then walked towards him mutely.

There was one more ghost he had to talk to, first.

. o .

“Do you want the truth or a yes-man?” Sam asked him after a long, long pause.

Steve weighed that honestly. “Truth,” he said.

Sam sighed. He looked ragged, worn. He’d been in melees, firefights, real hot zones—but there was something about a _battlefield_ , even without its thousands of corpses, that rattled the spirit. That called into question every decision that led one there. _You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?_

“You’re not even _gone_ and I miss you.” Sam looked out at the lake as he spoke, but there was a little wobble in his voice, one that he rarely showed. For all his _it’s okay to be vulnerable_ and _sometimes we have to bleed so we can find the wound_ talk, he was a pillar of strength. In the toughest times, Sam Wilson held out. It was amazing, really. Like Sam’s voice on the mic. _My guy’s back in the air_. “I take it there’s no point in asking if you need me to come with you.”

The way he phrased it made the answer clear: “No.”

“Damn,” Sam sighed. He didn’t look at Steve; he didn’t seem capable of looking right at him.

Steve offered, “It’s okay, Sam.”  
But Sam just said softly, “Damn, damn, damn.” Then, at last, he turned, held out an arm, almost lamely. “C’mon. I want a hug.” _Before you go_ , he didn’t add.

Steve didn’t know how many hugs he could take before he shattered, but he stepped forward and embraced Sam firmly. “Thanks for coming back,” Sam offered against his shoulder. “We never said it—but we needed you, Cap.”

“I’m not worried,” Steve said, gently retreating. Shaking a little— _shaken_. “If I don’t come back—you got eyes in the skies.”

Sam looked up at the night sky. “We won. So, why’re we all like this?”

Steve just clasped his shoulder. _You can’t win a war without losing a part of you_.

Sam pulled him into another hug. “Thank you. For everything.”

“I’ll see you on the other side,” Steve promised.

. o .

It was only when he approached the platform for a second time that the pain began to set in.

He first noticed the ache in his back, far more pronounced than he expected it to be. A memory stirred to explain it: Thanos and his sword bearing down on him, chipping away at his upraised shield, each blow distant, muffled in his memory. There was a sharp, growing, difficult pain in his leg and a matching pain in his shield arm, neither of which held a distinct origin. The fight was a blur, a mad rush of blows. From the inside, fast-and-furious perspective of a mortal against an immortal entity, it was a miracle he had lasted five seconds against Thanos’ wrath. That he was scathed was expected.

Still, putting on the broken shield on his equally broken arm was more symbolic than practical. Even Tony Stark’s expertise would not be able to fix this mistake, he thought. Emotion suffocated him; the last few steps were absolutely painful, smothering his grief.

Next to the briefcase, there was a gift: Mjolnir. Steve did not look around, did not question Thor’s sincerity. He simply swallowed against the lump in his throat, reached down with his broken arm, and grasped the handle. The hammer had heft to it, but it still swung easily into his grasp.

“Gonna miss you, jerk,” Bucky heckled nearby.

Steve dropped the hammer, and the shield, and stumbled into him, grasping at him less in an embrace than a desperate bid for stability. Bucky held him up—but there was a real sense of loss, there, too, of _too late_ , of _not enough_. Some wounds never closed, Steve was reminded, as Bucky’s metal arm curved around his back. Some things were just— _gone_. “Tell me to stay,” Steve whispered, heated and frightened, out of his mind. He just wanted to sleep and knew he would never sleep again if he stayed.

Bucky sighed against him, not sad the way Sam was sad but sad, nonetheless. “Kid,” he said, and then, less personally: “Steve. If I did, you’d never be happy. Go. It’s what you want. Live your own adventure.”

Steve leaned into him so much any other man would’ve fallen down. Bucky held his ground.

“You shake any harder, you’ll rattle my teeth,” Bucky said.

Steve told him, the specter of his best friend in life, the ghost of a man he had once trusted with everything: “I love you, Buck.”

Bucky squeezed him, once. “Breaks my heart that you do, kid,” he said.

It was what Steve needed to hear, in a way. Like, _Your Ma’s dead, Stevie. Not sick, not away, but six-feet-under-dead. There’s no moving past it. It’s just what it is._ No comfort, no consolation—but the words of a friend, spoken in an otherwise empty room. Bucky had always been blunt about things, a realist where Steve was a dreamer.

“Nothing’s changed,” Steve said aloud, withdrawing at last, shaky and cold and on his feet by sheer force of will. He wanted to sleep, so badly. He was so tired. “You’re still—”

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 107th Infantry, United States Army.” Bucky smiled wryly. “Yeah. You know, the best thing about the serum? You remember everything. The long stuff, the long, _long_ stuff, like—being kids. I remember that stuff.” Quietly, almost guiltily, Bucky asked him, “You ever just wanna be kids again, Stevie?”

Steve nodded, then nearly fell against Bucky’s shoulder, more afraid to let go than to take a bullet to the heart. At least the bullet would be quick. How long would he bleed from this? “So stupid,” Bucky mused, on a totally different level, emotionally, casual and resigned. It was hard to imagine what the inside of Bucky’s brain was like. _Echoing silence_ , he offered up, with such a deadpan look Steve couldn’t tell if he was kidding or serious. “But I guess all kids are.” Then he pushed Steve away, not meanly but firmly. “Go on, you’re making me all weepy.” His eyes were dry, though, and his voice was steady. “You made it this far without me. You can go the rest of the way.”

Steve said tightly, in anguish, “What about—”

“’Til the end of the line? Kid—Steve.” Bucky looked into his soul, steel-grey eyes hard as iron. “You brought me here. I’m happy. You are clearly not. For the love of the Almighty— _go_ get _happy_. Or I’ll chase you outta town myself,” he teased, but his eyes were still so grey, so serious. “Besides—I don’t have any doubt in my mind we’ll meet again soon. Right?”

Steve nodded. Swallowed. Said breathlessly, “Yeah. Yeah.” It was a huge promise. It was an even greater burden—if he _didn’t_ save Bucky, then—

“Hey. Hey.” Bucky cupped his head, brought their foreheads together briefly. Steve went very still. “Shut up a second. All right?”

Steve did. And he could hear the soundscape of the quiet night, the insects and distant presence of animals, the quiet lake, the quiet cabin. But above all, he could hear Bucky’s heartbeat, a steady march, so very unlike his own, rabbiting away. “Everything’s gonna be all right,” Bucky drawled, like old times, pushing him away gently but firmly. “’Cause I said so. Now scram.”

Bucky was always the smart one, Steve thought, too dry-mouthed to speak, too dry-eyed to cry. He shakily reached for his shield, his hammer. His briefcase remained on the platform.

“Go, get happy,” Bucky ordered. “And don’t forget to write.” And then he smiled, like he knew Steve wouldn’t, but he was okay with it.

He was the only one Steve would actually consider taking with him. Not because he was the only one up to the task—but because he was the only one Steve _always_ took with him. They were inseparable, once. It was strange and frightening to imagine separating on purpose.

“I’ll find you,” Bucky assured him, and he couldn’t know what an assurance it was, how much it _meant_.

“Thanks, Buck,” was all Steve said.

. o .

“What’s going on?”

Of all people, Steve expected Happy Hogan to make a belated appearance least. “What’re we doing?”

“Fulfilling our half of the user term agreement,” Dr. Banner said without looking up from his switches.

Hogan didn’t accept that: “Rogers—”

“It’s okay.” It was the first time since Tony Stark had died that Steve had actually said those two words, out loud, in conjuncture. Oddly enough, it felt like it actually would be. “It’s okay,” he repeated, just to savor the feeling.

Hogan—who had never trusted him, who had always thought him out of place and out of sorts, who had leaped to Tony Stark’s defense in the wake of _everything_ —looked at him and dropped his shoulders. For a moment, he looked as mortal and tired and beleaguered as the rest of them. Then he straightened, carefully aligning his mask, his unstinting loyalty to the dead in the face of the living, and said stiffly, “Don’t fuck it up.”

Steve nodded once. Dizzy, fatigued beyond reasonable measure, he looked to Dr. Banner hopefully. Dr. Banner looked up, sensing his gaze, and nodded back. “Ready when you are.”

Hogan wordlessly retreated. Steve didn’t look at him, or the cabin, or the rest of the forest. He looked down at the briefcase, aware that the world was beginning to phase out of focus before Dr. Banner narrated, “On my mark, then. . . .”

. o .

_“Where’s Captain Rogers?” Scott Lang asked much later, at the funeral. “I know he didn’t_ like _the guy, but—”_

_“No,” Colonel Rhodes said, holding onto Tony Stark’s metal heart. “I’m pretty sure he loved the guy.”_

. o .

Steve Rogers set the briefcase containing the end of the world down and knocked on Tony Stark’s door.

After two long minutes, it swung open. The damage two days could do was astonishing—without the time heist, without the battle, without the gauntlet, Tony Stark looked so _spry_. His face was clear and open; the shock in his eyes was palpable as he took in Steve’s premature arrival, his belated response to an unopened letter. 

_I know I hurt you, Tony_.

Tony’s gaze flickered over him, trying to process what he was seeing: Mjolnir in one hand; Steve’s broken shield farther up the same arm; his strange, red-and-white suit covering the rest. Steve let him drink his fill.

Then he said simply, “Thanos is coming.”

Something peaceful and fragile shattered; Tony gripped the doorway for support. Steve added softly, “I’m here to help.”

Tony nodded, swallowed. He looked tempted to turn around and slam the door. Steve didn’t deserve any more, but it wasn’t about him. “I know I hurt you, Tony,” he parroted. Tony looked at him oddly, unnervingly silent. “And I know you’re scared.”

Tony said nothing, but his breathing shallowed perceptibly. His heart was pounding. He was genuinely scared, and Steve hated taking his final peaceful hours away from him, but: “You won’t be alone.”

. o .

They sat on the porch by the lake.

Tony asked what was in the briefcase. Steve flicked it open.

“This a trick?” Tony asked, eyes very wide. “Where the hell did you—”

Steve let him decide for himself the truth. Tony breathed, “That’s—how?”

“We won,” Steve lied. _At great cost_ , he didn’t need to add, holding Tony’s gaze.

“We lost something,” Tony said, face ashen. “You wouldn’t be here if—” His gaze flickered over Steve, looking for clues. Steve saw the exact moment he got it. It was strange to watch a man come to grips with his own mortality hours before it happened. He always thought of Tony as brave—and he was brave; he was braver than any of them, doing the hardest thing that needed to be done—but there was human anguish there as he said, “It’s not gonna be okay. Is it?”

 _I never said it was_.

Tony rubbed his chest where the reactor used to be. “Can’t spring this all on me at once, Cap,” he said, but there was defeat, not anger, in his voice. “I’m not a young man.”

 _You’re too young to die_.

“ _I have a daughter_ ,” Tony whispered, like he was realizing it would be _past tense_ , soon, and Steve was an avenging angel for laying the knowledge at his feet. “I _had_ —” And that was the exact moment that Tony Stark crumpled, hugging himself desperately, hunched over in raw grief.

That was the man Steve had known, for years, the better part of a decade. Didn’t matter how much he had—it was all about _who_ , Rhodey, Pepper, _are they okay?_ And now—he was ripping a father from his daughter.

The door swung open again. “Daddy?”

Morgan Stark lingered in the doorway as Tony hugged himself, mortally wounded. “Daddy?” Morgan repeated, stepping forward.

Tony drew in a breath like he was drowning, then sat up. “Hey,” he said, arms unfurling, held out, wide open. “Hey, sweetheart, come here. Come here.” He scooped her up and hugged her so tightly. Steve felt like he was just there to watch. “Come here, Daddy’s got you. Everything’s gonna be okay.” He hugged his daughter and stared at the time traveler, eyes wide open. “Everything’s gonna be—”

“Just fine,” Steve assured. Morgan lifted her head, turning to look at him. She didn’t know him, yet. “I promise.”

Morgan tipped her head on Tony’s shoulder. Tony pressed his cheek against the top of it, eyes shut tightly. “Why’d you make Daddy sad?” she asked.

The question hit deeper than she could know. Tony looked at him with red eyes, accusing, not understanding but _knowing_.

Steve drew in a slow breath and let it out. Pain was a strange thing. The Titan’s marks were on him, but they could not see them—only he could feel them, underneath his suit. The god of war took a knee on battered leg and slid the briefcase closer. Morgan leaned forward to look. Tony gripped her tighter. 

“These stones can change the universe,” Steve explained. Morgan watched him attentively, so the god of war went on, “Just like turning on a light.” He reached for the purple power stone and held it in his open palm. Tony’s eyes were saucers. Morgan’s were quiet, watchful. “Someone wants to turn off the light,” Steve said, replacing the purple stone and retrieving the blue space stone, “so the universe can be dark again.”

Morgan huddled closer to her Daddy. “Why?” she whispered.

Steve deliberated over his answer. “Because some people don’t like what the universe is,” he said at last. “They think it’s too big. Too bright. Too beautiful.”

Morgan’s hand was near her mouth, fretful, but listening. Ares said, “I’m here to keep the light on. I look after the switch.” The god of war found a small, rueful smile. “There’s only one switch. It’s right here.” He swapped out blue for red, the reality stone. “Each stone has its own place. A wizard,” he said, and reached casually and calmly for the green time stone, holding time and reality together in a single hand, “gave me this one.”

“Wow,” Morgan said, more impressed at _wizard_ than the prospect of bending reality.

Children had no concept of war, Ares thought—war was branded onto the skin, not embedded underneath it. “A very trustworthy wizard,” Steve agreed, replacing the green and red stones in their slots. He picked up the orange soul stone somberly. “Some of these are very hard to get,” he said, an explanation without an explanation. “I lost a very good friend for this one.”

He heard Tony’s breathing shallow more. Steve met his eyes, wondering if he should tell him. Morgan asked, “Who?”

“It’s okay,” Steve decided, replacing the orange stone. “It won’t happen again.”

“What’s that one?” Morgan asked, pointing at the yellow stone.

Steve picked it up and held it aloft. “This,” Ares said, “is the mind stone.” He held it out to her questing hand. She reached, but Tony stood up abruptly, putting distance between them. “It won’t hurt,” Steve said. The power stone was the most dangerous one.

“Get away from my—” Tony drew in a strangled breath. He forced himself to calm down, to say gently in front of his daughter, “Don’t you dare.”

“Tony,” Steve said.

“Leave,” Tony said. “Take the—” He indicated the briefcase.

Steve replaced the yellow mind stone in the box. Then he closed the briefcase, lifted it—it felt both lighter and heavier than Mjolnir—and announced gently, “I just want to help.”

“Daddy?” Morgan asked Tony, looking for guidance.

“It’s okay,” Steve offered. “Everything will be okay,” the god of war affirmed, emboldened, weary.

He waited until they stepped back inside before taking his leave.

. o .

With his hammer and his broken shield, Ares traversed the celestial continent, searching for clues, for ways to prevent or thwart the mad Titan’s endgame.

He ran into friends again and again—to Natasha and Sam, to Bucky and Clint, to Thor and Sharon, to Peggy and Fury—and shared his knowledge carefully, leading them along as much as possible. _You decide who I am_ , the stranger in their midst explained gently. _Don’t let me interrupt_.

He rooted through fourteen million possibilities, tenaciously, carefully, until, at last—

Wounds healed over but shield still broken, Steve knocked on Tony Stark’s door once again. Steve walked with a slight limp—one of the gifts from the mad Titan these people did and did not remember, reminiscing with him, wondering with him, asking him what he intended to do with the stones. 

_Give them back_ , he told them. _Eventually_.

The door opened. Tony Stark looked a lot older—his face unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, his hair peppered with silver—but the weariness multiplied tenfold when he saw Steve. “It’s too late, buddy,” he said, already moving to shut the door. “I’m sorry.”

Gently, Ares slid a foot between the sliding door and its frame. Tony jerked as if shot, waking up, it seemed, to the reality in front of him. He blinked once, twice, then managed in a rasp, “Steve?”

Steve saw a pain in those eyes he had known all his life. _Loss is forever. Loss is for good. You only mourn the things you loved_. “Hey, Tony,” Ares said. “S’been a long time.”

Tony had never so much as patted him on the shoulder before, but he tackled Steve in a ferocious embrace, bony and battle-worn but _real_ in his arms. Real in a way that the body had not been, as he carried it off the battlefield, because no one else wanted to touch it. He drew in a breath that smelled like machines, that smelled like battle fatigue, that smelled like smoke and ash and _no, no, no, don’t do this to me, c’mon, Cap, we’re so damn close_ —

He held Tony as long as Tony needed him, but Tony never let go.

. o .

For the first time in centuries, Ares was welcomed home. 

“Buddy,” Sam said, teary but beaming, gripping him and shaking him, insisting, “I missed you. _God_ , I missed you.”

For the first time in a long time, Ares’ back ached. Old wounds tugged by bear hugs, by Thor, son of Odin, cracking his ribs in celebration. “Shield-brother!” he said, like it was always there, like he saw underneath Ares’ skin, right to the heart of the matter. _We are not people anymore. We are like gods_.

 _God plays dice with the universe_ , Steve thought, as Tony introduced him to a kid named Harley Keener, who had shown up for Captain America’s funeral and lingered to spend time with an old friend. “You were smaller,” Tony teased him, holding up a hand at middling height. “What the hell happened?”

It was wonderful to see Tony laugh, to see him _smile_ , to see him greet Steve not with confusion or anger but simple, heart-aching relief. Steve struggled to immerse himself, aware that he was an interloper. A stranger in their midst.

 _I am the god of war_ , he did not announce. _And I’m here to fight the mad Titan Thanos_.

The war was—could it ever be over? Could it ever truly be done?

“That’s an interesting box you’ve got there,” Dr. Stephen Strange greeted. “Mind sharing what’s in it?”

“I think you know,” Steve said. This was a test, Ares knew. This was a changing moment.

“I won’t take a knee, if that’s what you’re waiting for,” Dr. Strange said. He was a wizard—superbly trained, supremely endowed, and yet, underneath, human. He could revoke it all and go back.

There was no going back for Ares. He offered his brother-in-arms the case. Chronos took it.

“I’ll take good care of it,” Chronos offered.

Ares nodded once. “I know.” His heart was pounding. He felt on the verge of collapse—on the edge of mayhem and euphoria. “This isn’t the end.”

“No, of course not,” Chronos dismissed. He seemed very comfortable with the keys to the universe in his hand. Then again, Steve was comfortable with broken shield and god’s hammer in his fist. _We were meant to be more_. “Take care.” Then he walked away.

Ares watched him, wondering where he would go first. Then Tony said, “I know you’re not him.”

Steve turned to face him. Tony’s expression was rueful and relieved in equal measure. “I don’t expect you to be,” Vulcan said, looking him over once, taking him in. “I didn’t sign up for a normal life. I signed up for—”

Steve embraced him. For a moment, Vulcan was stiff, surprised. Then he planted his feet firmly, said, “I’ve got you.”

Tethered at last, Steve let the hammer sink from his fist, the shield slope off his arm.

 _The war’s not done_ , he thought, eyes shut, embrace tight. _But thank God, I’m here_.

. o .

“Tell me about him,” Vulcan requested, analyzing Steve’s broken shield in a makeshift lab portion of his cabin. “Must’ve been a pretty quick trigger finger, to beat _you_ , big fella.”

It was strange to hear Tony Stark brag about his own demise. Maybe only Tony Stark could. “He was brave,” Steve said honestly. He sensed it was a little too much honesty; Vulcan was quiet for a long time.

“He loved his daughter,” Steve went on.

“Stop,” Tony said, voice expressionless but sincere. Steve did.

Tony drew in a deep breath, then sighed it out. “I’d kill for that kid,” he said. “I’d die for her, too. You ever feel that? Not just— _oh, hypothetically, if we were in danger_ , but _no, actually, there’s no force on this Earth that could stop me from protecting her?_ ”

Steve nodded mutely.

“I’d go to prison for the rest of my life before I let anyone harm her,” Tony said gravely. “I’d do—anything. No exceptions.” He drew in another steadying breath, took a seat at a bench. “She’s my world. My baby.” He gripped his shirt over the space where the arc reactor once was. “I thought about it. Losing her. I’ve thought about all of it.” He looked at his hand, released his shirt. Opened his palm to show Steve it was empty. “I held it in my hand. The mind stone.”

Ares let him talk, pacing around the space, memorizing it. “I still didn’t want you to die,” Tony said, as Steve’s back was nearly turned to him. “I wanted—God, I really wanted a good ending.”

Steve looked at the trinkets on the wall. “We don’t always get what we want,” he philosophized. He was allowed to. He had seen enough to.

Tony scoffed, but it was more friendly than bitter. “Yeah. Yeah. And we might not get what we need.” He stood, crossed the room, and put both hands on Steve’s elbows. “You know, for about . . . seventy-two-hours, give or take, I lived in a world where we weren’t ever going to be a team again.”

Steve looked him in the eye. “And how did you feel about that?” he asked, already knowing.

Tony held his gaze. “Felt like I couldn’t breathe,” he said. “But I was still . . . breathing.”

Ares rested his forehead against Vulcan’s. Vulcan did not move away.

“I have a wife, a kid, and a goddamn white picket fence,” Vulcan said. “And now—I have you.”

“You never lost me,” Steve said honestly. “Somewhere—I was out there.”

. o .

They became perfectly inseparable, Thor, Tony, and Steve. 

Tony introduced Morgan to Thor, who laughed without that bent, broken sound as he lifted her up high and proclaimed her a future warrior. If Tony grimaced at the vocational recommendation, it was easy to see why: Vulcan only _forged_ the weapons of war—in his perfect world, they would never be taken off the shelf. 

Yet Thor relished the opportunity to talk about war, going on about how Asgard would rebuild again, how they would live to see the sun rise on their kingdom once more, and how it would be an honor and a privilege to watch little Morgoona go on to great glory. Morgan laughed with him, squealing at his antics. Yet there was restfulness in Thor’s soul, too—a calm awareness that the mad Titan was dead, and at last, they could begin to live a life without him.

That restfulness extended to Tony, in some ways—he seemed at ease with the two of them around, as long as Morgan was close enough to grab, if need be—but there was also a restlessness in his soul, exposed as he tinkered and planned and contemplated the next trial. He refused to rest on his laurels, explaining that they had hardly walked away from this fight _unscathed_.

Ares did what he was good at doing: he listened. He listened to Colonel Rhodes voice his grief in the night, mourning a man who wasn’t dead anymore. For years, they hadn’t spoken—they had barely acknowledged each other during the time heist, professional but aloof. It felt good to sit with him as he vented his rage, his grief, slowly, slowly. 

Colonel Rhodes grieved for Steve Rogers in a way that humbled him, reminded him that underneath a thin veneer of rage, they were all forged in the same fire. They had been closer than blood, once; there was no call Steve would not answer if it was Colonel Rhodes asking.

 _We’re the Avengers. We can bust arms’ dealers all the live-long-day, but this, right here—this is family_.

Ares listened to Morgan, too. Morgan wanted to show him everything, including—he was ambivalent, utterly, completely nonplussed by—her Captain America shield. It was a replica, Tony insisted, merely a tangible blueprint. Millions of kids had them—most weren’t real metal, but they were ubiquitous, toys of war distributed as the talismans of heroes.

She wanted to be a warrior, she proclaimed, which put a very pained expression on Tony’s face that tried to be a supportive smile. Her Daddy was _Iron Man_ , after all—what else could she aspire to, than some form of greatness?

Steve let her come to him, balancing her on his shoulders so she could utilize a crawl space near the top of the stairs. Steve would have worried more that she could hurt herself if he didn’t know Tony Stark was behind the jungle-gym-like apparatus, the spaces where Morgan Stark could go to be Morgan Stark alone. He had the painful imagery of a much-younger Tony Stark taking advantage of whatever crawl space he could find, isolating himself so he could discover the universe.

He made a point of not interrupting Tony in his workshop, even if he was hungry for his company, in particular. Tony needed space; Tony carved it out, if he had to. Steve gave it to him, as much as he could bear. He spent a lot of time talking with the others, checking in, reassuring them that he was real and not going anywhere.

“I always knew you’d come home,” Bucky said. Bellerophon had suffered in Ares’ wake. Yet he’d held his own. Half-human, half-god, he proclaimed, “I called it, kid.” He looked at Steve with such piercing awareness that Steve could not help but think it was the same man, all those jumps ago. “’Til the end of the line, pal.”

. o .

Perseus was aging well. “I’m ready, you know? I’m ready,” Peter Parker explained, indicating a bag but meaning the world at large. “Next time, I’ll be—you face this down, you can face down any barrel.”

Ares looked on with sadness and grim approval. He laid a hand on Peter’s shoulder. Perseus’s wide-open eyes looked back at him. “You won’t be alone,” he said, an echo chamber.

Perseus swallowed. “Thanks. Thanks, Cap.” He reached for Steve’s hand like he would cover it, then retreated without ever touching it. “Means a—well. You know. Means the world, coming from you.” Then Peter asked plainly, “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Please don’t die. I—I can’t—twice.”

Ares nodded once. He slid his hand off Perseus’s shoulder, then encouraged, “Not when I’ve got unfinished business.”

Peter scrutinized him. Then he offered, “Just gotta keep racking up that to-do list, huh?”

Steve nodded. Peter ducked in for a quick hug, under his arms, like a kid seeking a parent’s approval. “I love you,” he blurted out, quickly, like he was afraid of the reproach that might come. “Okay, good talk.” He took off at a brisk jog for the cabin, shouting, “Hey, Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark, I’m leaving!”

Mr. Stark came out after three more repetitions, balancing Morgan on his shoulder. Peter saluted her, then stuttered, “I, uh—I’ll miss you. Both of you. I can visit, soon, right?”

Tony nodded, accepting a hug with a faux-pained expression. Ares left them to their own devices.

. o .

Ares liked his new family. 

He liked Thor, especially. Their talks were longer and more meaningful, encompassing a wide range of issues surrounding both Asgard and Midgard. They spoke not like Avengers, but like the gods they had become. Thor through birth; Steve through might. “It makes no error,” Thor decreed, as Steve warmed his feet by a fire, Mjolnir at his side. “‘Whosoever holds this hammer, if they be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.’” He smiled, leaned forward, and offered with jocular consolation, “You were a close second. For a Midgardian. But now—we are equals.” He offered a hand; Steve clasped it. “We are like brothers.”

Steve gripped his hand hard for a few moments. “Tell me what it was like,” he asked. “When I died.”

Thor released his hand, only to lay a familial hand on his knee, a connection point. The fire crackled before them. 

“It was not like death at all,” Thor said at last. “Not as your people—as they have called it.” It was a quiet but profound moment, to be separated, acknowledged. “It was the great passing over,” Thor explained. He smiled warmly at Steve. “And now, here you are. Returned to us. All of you.” Ares stared at Thor, enraptured. Thor leaned in, confided, “It is all real. And it is all in you. So long as you walk, your spirit shall remain with us.” Then, releasing Steve’s knee, he gestured expansively. “It is a rare gift, to walk more than one life. So few ever receive it. That’s why I know—my brother will walk again.”

Steve sat with that, with him. “Your brother—”

“Some,” Thor interjected, gentle but firm, “like to light the great forests on fire. We tell them, _Do not do this, you’ll destroy the old trees_. The old trees, they are of course the largest and most precious. They take many years to regrow. But these mischievous ones, they light the forests on fire, anyway. And much is lost. Much is mourned, and the ones responsible, they are taken before the Allfather, and he gives them their punishment, usually in the form of lashings. But sometimes, the Allfather, he asks, _Why have you destroyed these trees?_ And the mischievous ones reply, _Because they burn_.” Thor let that sink in, staring into the fire. Steve watched Thor.

“My brother,” Thor went on, “is like this. He wants to watch the forests burn, not because he . . . hates trees, or even loves fires. He simply loves the way they burn. He would tire of a throne,” Thor added, almost conversationally. “Oh, he would revel, but he would lose interest. So, I ask you—how do we handle these people?”

Steve pondered that. “Locked doors,” he suggested wryly.

Thor smiled. “No. No, we set them free,” he said. “We esteem their skills as warriors, pay them special honors as guardians. The fire-burners are precious to us, as much as any other spirit who dwells in the realm of Asgard. We were not all cut from the same cloth,” Thor said, and held out an open palm. Steve rested his own hand on top of it, struck not for the first time just how imposing Thor really was. 

“We would have no qualms if we were,” Thor said, curling his fingers around Steve’s, squeezing. “Perhaps it is our downfall. Maybe it is our strength.” He released Steve, then, casually, swept up Mjolnir, holding it over the fire. “There are, among my family, those who would eradicate the fire-burners,” he said. “Those who say they tarnish the name of _Asgardian_. The mischievous ones, the berserkers—whatever name you call it, some people . . . are not always easy to love.” He smiled gently, heating Mjolnir over the fire, its engravings shining glowing orange. 

“There are crimes that cannot be forgiven as easily as a replanted tree,” Thor admitted soberly. “There are those who chose to walk the path of true evil.” He laid the hammer right in the fire, its letters aglow. “It is always a tragedy when this happens.”

. o .

“Do you think Loki is evil?” Ares asked Vulcan. It was very late—or very early—but he wasn’t surprised Tony was still up.

Vulcan paused at his workbench, then spun around on his chair to face him. “Bruce said he tried to kill Thanos,” Tony said. “So.” Shrugging, he spun back around. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Tony.”

. o .

“Daddy, I want to go swimming.”

“Can’t right now, sweet pea,” Tony told his daughter, balancing her on his knee while he futzed with a helmet with his free hand. “Did you ask Mommy?”

“She said she’s busy,” Morgan chirped.

“I’ll take her,” Steve offered, looking up from his book.

Tony’s screwdriver stilled. He set his screwdriver down, then spun slowly on his chair, making Morgan giggle. “Again,” Morgan demanded. “Daddy, aga—”

Their eyes met for a long moment, and Steve almost expected wrath, defensive but undiluted.

Instead, Tony swallowed, then shuffled Morgan off his lap. “No drowning,” he said simply.

The lake was cold but warming up in the sunshine. Morgan squealed and backed out of the water repeatedly, only to charge back into the shallows. Steve stood patiently with her, pant legs rolled up, one hand in hers.

At some point, Steve heard the front door to the cabin open, heard Tony settle down with an audible harrumph into a chair. He held Morgan’s hand gently while she splashed around, venturing deeper only to squeal in alarm, beating a hasty retreat before making a renewed charge.

Bucky finally huffed, “You call that a swim?” and stripped to his skivvies before wading out into the water. “The water’s fine. C’mon,” he encouraged, holding out his arms. Morgan hurried towards him, not letting herself shy from the cold. “See, you’re a brave one, you’re—”

“Steve,” Sam warned from the shore, and Steve scooped up Morgan just before Tony could pitch into the water.

Morgan complained, “Hey—”

But Steve just said, “It’s all right, Tony, it’s all right.”

Tony was heaving for breath, arms shaking so much Steve didn’t like putting Morgan into them, but he had no right to keep a father from his daughter when said father snatched her out of his arms. “Daddy,” Morgan whined. “I wanna _play_.” Tony ignored her, marching them back to the porch, then nudging the door open and disappearing inside the house.

Sam sighed from the shore. Bucky said behind him, “I’m sorry.”

Steve turned to him. “It’s not you,” he said, and he meant it.

. o .

In Greek mythology, Bellerophon stole Pegasus, Heracles’ very own steed, and tried to join the gods on Mount Olympus.

“I’m not a good man,” super-soldier serum candidate Bucky Barnes acknowledged, sitting on shore with him.

“You are a good man,” Steve insisted fiercely. “I don’t care what they made you. We made you back.”

Bucky leaned his shoulder against Steve’s. Damp even with his shirt, it was cold, heavy, and made entirely of metal. “You can’t do that, Steve,” he sighed. “Make or unmake. This is what I am.”

Steve leaned back into him. It hurt. The wounds Thanos had afflicted on him had healed, but not fully. He was used to pain. What scared him, made him pause, wasn’t pain: it was loss. “You did what you had to survive,” Steve said, hushed, pleading. “You did what you had to—”

“So did you.” Bucky leaned away from him, letting his gaze slide over Steve. For one fraction of a second, Steve felt the weight of his envious rage, deep, unkillable.

 _I didn’t win this fight either, pal_ , Ares thought, but he said absolutely nothing, letting the moment sizzle into obscurity. 

If the universe had arbitrated a god between them, who in their right mind would have chosen 4F Steve over 1A Bucky?

A good man like Dr. Erskine. A Nazi would have chosen Bucky.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky apologized, menial, flat-voiced. He apologized often, like he was unafraid of the blame. “Forget I—”

“No,” Steve said stubbornly, because he would not indulge _forget_. He remembered—everything. Even the scraps Bucky told him _forget about it_.

He kept them all, like newspaper scraps in his shoes.

. o .

In Greek mythology, Ares’ life was a tragedy. He was the god of war—his life was doomed to spiral from civil order to total destruction. Even in the places he might have found scraps of peace, there was only hopeless disaster: his only love was already married, and his daughter, his _daughter_ , was—

Rocking in a chair with Morgan sleeping on his shoulder, Steve kept his eyes shut. He experienced a strong sense of déjà vu, a feeling of profound separation from the present. 

He remembered Tony Stark’s expression when he had died. _It was not peaceful_.

Ares solved his problems with his sword—he killed the man who loved the same woman that he did. He could never have her; killing was not enough.

 _You killed him_ , a voice whispered. _You killed yourself, for this_.

He wondered what his own face had looked like, mangled almost beyond recognition. Skin melting off, eyeball sagging out of its socket, half his face _charred_ , like he had spent hours in an oven, emerging broken and gasping and struggling to breathe, never mind speak. The great orator Tony Stark, finally rendered _speechless_.

Would Steve Rogers have looked more or less grotesque? Would his heroic fat and muscle have melted away, revealing the skinny, sickly skeleton underneath, warped beyond recognition? Would they have seen, in those last gasping breaths, who he really was?

Or did he die like this—eyes shut, so they could not see him, and he could not see them?

He rocked Morgan slowly in the chair and imagined other lives.

. o .

_Tony Stark was wise: he held the gauntlet as far away from his body as he could. That bought him time._

_When Steve Rogers snapped his fingers, he kept his hand close to his chest. The blow very nearly cleaved him in half._

_Steve never saw the damage done to his own body, the gruesome way his own metal star carved through his chest and jammed bone and metal into his heart._

_He died, as nearly as possible, instantly._

. o .

For his godly theft, Bellerophon was crippled by Zeus and condemned to a life of exclusion.

Looking at Bucky on the porch, Ares wondered if exclusion wasn’t a gift, after all. He seemed peaceful, satisfied if not content.

. o .

“I’m still grasping it,” Asterion admitted. Ares would never again call him _The Minotaur_ , even though he had, once. “Still trying to . . . understand the implications.”

“Take your time,” Steve suggested.

Dr. Banner nodded once. “You feel real,” he offered, then grimaced at his own phrasing. “Sorry, that’s—callous.”

The Minotaur had once devoured humans for pleasure. “It’s not,” Ares assured. Compared to everything else, a little word play was hardly a thing to get stuck up about.

Dr. Banner nodded again, still not looking at him. “You’re leaving?” Steve prompted.

“About time. Past time, really.” Asterion moved carefully. Born a man, The Minotaur remembered the motions, even in his outsized, inhuman body. “I never liked imposing.”

“You never were,” Steve said seriously.

“Still. A week.” Dr. Banner shrugged his huge shoulders. He’d commanded the entire barn for his stay. It wasn’t an act of callousness—it was simply the most reasonable accommodations that could be made on short notice. “Time to—start again. You know?”

Steve nodded. He did know.

“I’m a phone call away,” Asterion offered. Then, turning to Ares, he added seriously, “Try not to need me.”

Steve nodded again. “We’ll do our best.”

Dr. Banner finished zipping his bag with huge fingers. “Thanks, Steve.” It was strange, hearing his name from the monster’s mouth. “I appreciate it. Really. For—all you’ve done.”

Something awful twisted in Steve’s stomach. Guilt, regret. Pain. “Don’t,” he said simply. It was less and more than he could manage.

. o .

“You look tired, man,” Sam greeted on screen. “You should come home. Everyone deserves a break, even Captain America.”

Even hearing the title felt like a lifetime ago. “That’s okay,” Steve said. _I am home_ , he didn’t add. It was too much, too presumptuous. He was an interloper in Tony and Pepper’s life—in Morgan’s life. _She is not your daughter_. “How’re you?”

“Hanging in there. You hear? They’re trying to pick a Falcon Day.” He broke into a familiarly infectious grin. “We’re gonna own half the calendar, at this rate.”

“Wouldn’t be the worst marketing scheme I’ve ever heard of,” Steve said. He remembered underwear campaign propositions, early on. S.H.I.E.L.D., for all its war crimes, had at least put its foot down on advertisement, freeing him from the embarrassing position of having to explain to people why he didn’t want to get half-naked for charity.

“Not even trying to sell toys,” Sam went on. “Just celebratory.”

“Celebratory,” Steve repeated. He wondered what his face gave away; Sam’s shifted from warmly amused to concerned. “They want to celebrate.”

“Three billion people came home,” Sam said. “People—yeah. They wanna celebrate. You’re really living alone out there, aren’t you?”

Steve knew the writing was on the walls. If Colonel Rhodes left, he would have no further excuse to stay. “Not exactly,” Steve evaded.

“Hey, man.” Sam’s expression went soft. “Come home. Nobody expects you to pick the whole world back up, Atlas.”

 _That’s not my name_. 

“I don’t think I could if I tried,” Steve said instead.

“Sure held your own against Thanos.” Steve frowned thoughtfully. “Burned into my memory,” Sam said. “You and him, hand-to-hand. That was incredible.”

 _It wasn’t enough_. “I’m—honestly, trying to forget,” he said. He’d rather erase Thanos from memory than all the tragedies he had because of him.

“I get that.” Sam was quiet for a moment, observing him. “You should get a dog. Or a cat. Something to come home to. Your apartment is so damn empty.”

“You went to my apartment?”

“Curiosity.”

Steve sighed. Sam offered, “Come on. I know, you gotta work, but I’m sure even Tony Stark takes a day off.”

 _Really doesn’t_. Vulcan’s whole life was his workshop. He could no sooner abandon it than sleep. To be fair, he _did_ avoid sleep. “Steve?” Sam prompted.

“That’s okay,” Steve said mechanically. “I’ll—” _leave when I’m supposed to_. “You take care of yourself.”

“Call me,” Sam said seriously. “Whenever. Stay in touch.”

Steve nodded. “Will do.” He signed off.

He got a text on his phone not long after. _Love you, Atlas. Be careful_.

Ares replied: _Always am. You, too_.

. o .

In Egyptian mythology, Horus and Set warred.

Horus won. But at what cost?

“We didn’t sign up for roses and daisies,” Set said, sitting on the couch, his broken back braced with technology Vulcan had made for him. “We signed up . . . to do the right thing. When it was hard. Not if,” Colonel Rhodes finished, looking Ares in the eye.

They saw eye-to-eye on such things: Set was the god of war.

“He never wanted this,” Set said, indicating in some vague manner the host of the house, somewhere with his wife and daughter. “I shipped off, he stayed in touch.”

 _I’m sorry this happened,_ Steve thought, hyper-aware of the metal bracketing Colonel Rhodes’ back. _I’m sorry. I never wanted anyone to get hurt_.

“One of my many flaws, I’m sure,” Vulcan chimed in, standing in the doorway. He looked at the two of them. Morgan blinked at them from his shoulder.

“Wanna play a game,” Morgan said.

Tony looked at her. “Game, huh?”

“Card tricks,” she declared imperiously.

Colonel Rhodes sighed in a faux-suffering way. “Anything but card tricks.”

Tony fought a smile, but Steve could see the way that it twitched the corner of his mouth. “All right.” He hesitated, then set Morgan down. She immediately went to find cards. “This is why Scott’s on my shh-hit list,” Tony told them, taking a seat on the floor with a lot of complaining sounds. Morgan trampled over, cards in hand.

“What’s a hit list, Daddy?”

“Good one,” Colonel Rhodes said. Tony flicked a card at him, then shuffled them. Morgan sat down in front of him.

“It’s Santa’s naughty list, but for adults,” Tony said. “Steve’s on it.” It was hard to tell if he was serious or not; Tony’s anger could be fickle, unpredictable.

“Who’s Steve?” Morgan asked.

“Never mind,” Tony said. Steve watched him shuffle cards before holding them out. “Okay. Pick a card.”

They made it four rounds before, as if summoned by Providence, Scott Lang leaned his head in the room and pleaded, “Card tricks?”

“Ant Scott!” Morgan said, scrambling to her feet.

“Ahhh, there’s the little monkey,” Scott said, scooping Morgan up under one arm, making her giggle. Steve only knew that he had a young daughter— _eight or nine?_ —who had been Snapped—

_You’re going to grieve, whether it lasts a day, a month, or ten years // Finding closure is important. Have funerals. Have those ceremonies, make an urn. Pray for them, if that’s your calling // Similarities can be drawn to people whose loved ones have been kidnapped; you just want answers, you wanna be out there, day and night, turning over every stone, but you have to learn when it’s time to slow down, to take a rest, to—_

“Cap?”

Ares stood.

“I have to go.”

. o .

STEVEN G. ROGERS

☆☆☆

“CAPTAIN AMERICA”

UNITED STATES ARMY

JULY 4 1918 MAY 1 2023

FIRST AVENGER

The thing that unsettled him.

The thing that _bothered_ him.

Was that—

It wasn’t an _empty_ grave.

Break out a shovel, dig a few feet.

And there was a box.

And in there was a _body_.

The body of a hero.

Ares stood over his own gravesite for a long, long time.

. o .

“It was quick,” Tony said.

“I don’t care,” Steve replied softly.

 _Two shields met in the middle and the noise was_ astonishing _. They were fighting for their lives—their futures. Lose Loki or lose the mind stone. There was no question who had to win._

“I don’t think he felt a thing,” Tony went on.

“Goddammit, Tony,” Steve replied, voice louder.

_Chasing ghosts. Peggy met his eyes through the curtained window. She stared at him for a moment, not recognizing him in his stolen uniform. He ran._

“Whatever it takes,” Tony said.

 _See you in a minute_.

Ares knelt in the grass for a moment, bereaved beyond measure, fatally wounded. Somewhere not far below him, he rested. His cold, heartless doppelganger slept. He could dig him up with his bare hands.

He clenched his hands in the grass. There were no more tears left in him.

Vulcan stood watch.

. o .

“He had a family.”

Athena was the easiest one to find.

“Two sons. And a daughter.”

“Some people want to die,” Ares said. Ares knew this; Ares was the god of war.

Athena was the goddess of judgment. “I had him,” she whispered.

Ares joined her on the battlefield. It would take three years to restore the site to usability. As it was, the fight could have been yesterday. “What do you want me to say?” he asked her.

He was so damn happy to see her. She was so damn sad to see him. “Did you bring a plus-one?” she asked, and God, oh, God, his throat closed up, his chest compressing, because—

_Leave us behind so you can find your happy ending._

“I had one job,” he whispered, and she finally looked at him, and saw him, for the ghost of the man she knew, the monster that he had become. _None of us are left unscathed_. “One—goddamn—”

“Soul for a soul. Right?”

Dammit. _Dammit_. “I could’ve—” It was impossibly hard to force the words out. “Brought him,” he whispered.

For a moment, he thought Athena— _Natasha_ ; was that even her real name? Would he ever know?—he thought Athena would let him have it, tell him why he was naïve, why he’d undertaken a hopeless crusade to save his own future.

Instead, she said, “It’s okay, Steve.”

It was so flat, so devoid of emotion, so frankly _insincere_ that he could not possibly draw comfort from it—yet he did. His shoulders slumped in defeated exhaustion.

 _There is no winning in war, Captain. Only ending_.

This was ending. This was ending.

“We did our best,” Natasha Romanoff offered. “And this is it.”

. o .

And that was it.

Aeacus, god of the ant-men;

Asterion, off to wherever it was The Minotaur hid when he was not needed;

Athena, camping at the site of desolation like it would bring back what once was good;

Bellerophon, exiling himself with a promise to return only when the night was darkest;

Chronos, the wizard, the celestial timekeeper;

Horus, his very own eyes-in-the-sky;

Perseus, the young up-and-coming hero; and

Set, the god of war.

Thor and Loki, too, Ares added.

The rest—mere mortals, caught up in their endless time war.

God help them all.

. o .

In Greek mythology, Ares was a bad person.

Ares killed the man who coveted the same woman as him. He also killed the man who raped his daughter.

He was an unstable, temperamental warmonger. He had almost no friends but many attendants—including Death, Slaughter, Strife, Violence, and Battle Din.

He was ridiculed in the few narratives he featured in; he argued with every god in his pantheon, including his sister Athena.

Ares lusted for blood; Athena, the logical, centered alternative, was widely revered as the superior military leader for her control.

Greeks aspired to Athena, gave praise to her rationality, her strength. They reviled Ares.

In some ways, the best outcome of all? Was to kill Ares.

But Steve Rogers wouldn’t die. 

They put him in a plane full of _bombs_ , and he buried himself in arctic ice for half a century and emerged in fighting shape. Every mission they ever sent him on, they demanded a kind of excellence that couldn’t be found in paper arguments and negotiations. He stood against Athena, against Asterion, against Hermes, against Set, against _Vulcan_ , when they tried to throw chains on his neck.

He had given Vulcan a chance to stand down. He had not given him a chance to grieve.

 _I don’t want to start a war here_ , Ares had thought, looking in the mirror with knowledge he didn’t want to have.

Bellerophon had looked at him like he expected Ares to throw him to the fire. _You tell him—_

_I won’t._

Bellerophon had been floored. _You have to._

_No, I don’t._

Bellerophon had been afraid for him: _Steve—_

 _He doesn’t have to know. Not yet_.

Bellerophon had given in. You’re the god of war, he hadn’t said. _I don’t want you to get hurt_ , he’d replied.

Steve had gotten hurt. So had Tony. So had Bucky.

But Bellerophon had survived.

Looking up at Tony, his hate a palpable thing that would never be broken with words, Steve had rasped, “He’s my friend.”

Ares didn’t have friends. Maybe there was a reason.

. o .

( _So was I_.)

In Roman mythology, Vulcan was the god of fire.

Vulcan worked metal for the gods—from arms to jewelry, Vulcan was well-known for his craft.

Born to the king and queen of the _gods_ , Vulcan was destined for greatness.

Yet as an infant, Vulcan was cast down from Mount Olympus.

Vulcan was born too human for the tastes of gods. Young, red-faced, and squalling, he did not spring forth fully formed like mythical Athena or even dreaded Ares. No—he was a disappointment. He was cast down into the sea, where a kindly nymph raised him, instead.

Separated from the gods, he grew up and encountered fire. From it, he built a forge; from that forge, he built the greatest metalworks in history.

All because he was a god, working in a cave, with a box of scraps.

Forgive him, if he quarreled with the Greeks. They were before his time. They didn’t even speak his _language_.

He did the legwork—he learned to communicate, he learned to play _nice_ with the gods again, and when he was called, he made the summit.

And they had the nerve to call him _ugly_.

 _You, oh Merchant of Death_.

He made weapons for the gods to protect them. In turn, they called him a _murderer_.

Athena looked down on him; Hermes taunted him. Thor could be trusted only as an outsider. Asterion was the only one who _got_ him, a monster who was still mortal, in some ways.

And Ares?

 _We are_ not _soldiers_.

Ares was awesome—that was, both beautiful, and terrifying.

. o .

Vulcan murmured, “I’ll make you a better suit.”

Set placated patiently, “We got time, Tony. Take a rest.”

From the guest room, Ares listened to the two talk, lying in bed. He wasn’t tired, but he hurt. He hurt in ways that were hard to describe. _I clashed with a Titan. I may not have won_.

At least one version of him had definitely not. He closed his eyes to listen more closely.

“S’it weird? The whole—‘Cap’s not dead’ thing? Or is it just me?”

“We should take this outside, Tony.”

“No, no—be honest. I’m not the only one—”

“Yeah, it’s a little weird.” A beat. “We buried him.”

“We did. Thank you.”

“If it troubles you, go talk to him. Leave me alone.”

“Don’t lie, you love talking to me.”

“I love it when it’s not enabling you, Tony.”

“I wouldn’t sleep, anyway. You know that.”

A sigh. “I do.” A long beat. “Yeah. It’s a little weird.”

“So, I’m not the only one.” Tony sounded relieved.

“I guess—I feel bad. That—he’s still—”

“Right.”

“We should take this outside.”

“Bugs. Muggy. Let him hear.”

“Tony—”

“No, honestly. We’re supposed to be one big happy family. Right?”

Colonel Rhodes sighed.

“Look,” Tony said, a bit more tactfully. “I’m—processing.”

“It’s okay to grieve, Tony.”

“You and Wilson need to stop hanging out.”

“He’s got some good points. Really. Life’s hard enough when you beat yourself up for being human. They teach us how to be brave in combat, but not how to be human in peacetime. I’m just—”

After a long pause, Tony prompted, “You’re just—what?”

“I’m just—I’m glad. That. It was—that it _wasn’t_ —”

“. . . I thought about it. I—”

“You wouldn’t have made it.”

“No.”

A short pause. “You have a _daughter_ , Tony.”

“I know.”

“Don’t you—”

“Shut up.”

A sigh. “Look,” Tony went on. “It’s not about _me_. It’s about—everything else. Every _one_ else. The kid. The other one, the—Percy—no—”

“. . . Peter?”

“Peter. Right. Right. Don’t know why I said that, I haven’t slept in three days.”

“Tony—”

“Peter deserves a life. So do the . . . three-point-eight _billion_ —that’s _billion,_ with a _b_ —people who died that day. And that was just _Earth_. That wasn’t a hiccup, Rhodey. That was—”

“I know.”

They were quiet for a time. Steve almost thought they wouldn’t speak again. He had very nearly drifted off when Tony said suddenly, “You would’ve—Morgan—”

“Always, Tony.”

Tony drew in a slightly ragged breath. “You know, I almost—almost sent you to Vormir. Cap could handle New York. Cap and Banner.” Lowly, he added, “But—Gamora, she didn’t come back. She went with _Thanos_ , and only Thanos came back. And you know what we did? We sent our two weake—our two _human_ members, virtually unarmed, and expected both to come home. And I floated the idea by Romanoff—I said, ‘It should be Rhodes and I.’ Know what she said?”

“. . . Do I _want_ to, Tony?”

“She said—‘If we have to cut our losses, we can’t lose Iron Man.’”

“She knew.”

“Oh, she did. She’s always known. I think the wizard—Strange did, too. That _winning_ wasn’t _winning_ at all. We weren’t all coming out of it.”

“. . . Have you asked him? About—”

“No. Have _you_?”

“No.”

“Exactly. Terrifying, isn’t it? _We buried Captain America_ , and I’m still scared of his world.”

“We buried Captain America.”

Tony drew in a shallow breath. “I gotta—”

“Not tonight. Not tonight, Tony, tomorrow—”

“No, I—”

Steve hurt. His leg, his arm, his back. He didn’t really want to move, but he knew Colonel Rhodes was fighting a losing battle downstairs. The god of war geared up for another fight. He didn’t want Tony to go, either, to torture himself over a grave. _Unbury him. Shake him as hard as you can. It won’t bring him back_.

He was surprised by footfalls on the stairs. A knock on the door. Then, closer: “Cap?”

Steve leveraged himself upright. He _hurt_. The less guarded he was, the more painful it all seemed.

_You’ve heard of shock? The emotional kind is real, too. Something traumatic happens, the mind can’t cope with it all at once. It’s gotta compartmentalize, focus on what’s important and lock the rest in the attic. It’s gotta work in the immediate survival present, not the—_

The door creaked open. Ares wondered what a sight he made, hunched over on his bed, unmoving. “Cap?” Tony said again, more panicked, rushing forward. “What’s wr—?”

Steve lifted a placating hand. Tony blew out a sharp, almost annoyed breath. “Don’t do that,” Tony seethed, sitting on the bed. “Scared the—”

“I’m sorry, Tony.”  
Tony clamped his jaw shut so quickly it clicked. “Not your fault,” he lied. “And, honestly—I should be the one—”

Steve let him babble, the words flowing over him. “Cap?” Tony finally said, an intermission.

Steve drew in a long, bracing breath. He let it out slowly. “Hey,” Tony said, tone—strange. Almost conciliatory. “It’s okay. It’s been—a really weird couple of weeks, not gonna lie. I don’t think anyone—”

“You died, Tony.”

That shut him up real quick.

They sat with the silence for a while.

“And then?” Tony prodded quietly.

Steve looked at him. Tony grimaced at his expression. “That bad? What, did we—” He struggled to articulate the unthinkable. _Lose_?

“Thanos died.” Steve looked away. “So did his army.” Another long, long pause. Tony waited him out. “And Natasha,” he whispered.

Tony said softly, “Damn.”

“You lost Clint.”

It was Tony’s turn to nod wearily.

“I’m sorry.”

Tony huffed. “Lotta that going around,” he said, not making a move to get up. “We won. Why doesn’t it feel like it?”

“I don’t know,” Ares admitted quietly. Maybe it was simple: he was not supposed to be on the winning side of the war.

“You should leave. Soon.” The words were expected, yet somehow still cut very deep.

“I’ll leave tonight,” Steve responded, shifting to get up.

Tony clamped a hand on his leg. “Not that soon.” There was a palpable tremor under his skin. “I just. We’re. Holding pattern, right? This is—the _after_. And we can’t—there’s no—” He went stiffer and stiffer as Steve slowly looped an arm around his back. “What are you doing?”

Steve sighed and hugged him. Tony was stiff as a board in his hold. Steve couldn’t remember the last time he had first hugged Tony Stark. But Tony responded the same way—stiff, unsure, an unspoken line crossed. _Yeah, I don’t do that touchy-feely lovey-dovey yay-team thing_. Tony did, in fact, do all of that—just not with Steve. They came very close to touching, sometimes—but aside from the rare, deliberate handshake, they never actually made contact.

It was always a surprise, even for Steve, how small Tony actually was. How so much personality and zeal could fit in one human person. He wasn’t huge, like Thor, who somehow seemed even grander up close. He was just—powerfully human, driven by an inner engine that refused to quit.

“This is, I, uh.” Tony rambled against him without making a single move to pull away. Deer-in-headlights was a fairly apt metaphor. “I, um. Did you get hit in the head? You’re not a Skrull, are you?” Almost retaliatory, hands sifted through his neatly-combed hair, looking for an injury or mask that wasn’t there. Steve let him—even let him skim his fingers over the vulnerable nape of his neck. Quid pro quo, after all. Tony gripped there, almost daring him to overreact, and Steve tensed automatically, but he didn’t shove Tony away.

“We’re gonna be okay,” Steve said calmly, and it was strange to say it when Tony Stark and Steve Rogers were both dead, and alive. “I promise.”

Vulcan began to shake. Ares held him together.

. o .

“My earliest memory was sitting with Jarvis while he read _Captain America_ comics to me.” Musing, Tony said over a cup of coffee, “I must have been three or four. _Very_ young. I could already read, but I was—young. And I wanted—” _A father_ , he didn’t have to say. _A parent_ , he might have added. “He had this very upright accent,” Tony said. “It sticks in the mind, after all these years. Like . . . this man, this keen, intelligent, calm, _gentle_ soul, chose to align himself with one of the foulest-tempered, least-friendly, most overambitious spirit. 

“It was a match made in hell, you could say.” Tony took a long drink from his cup, drowning a bitter smile. “Just an exceptionally bad arrangement, but—well, he was gentle. He forgave my father when he should have run. He took the money and never _used it_. That was the extraordinary thing. He could have retired in eight years with more wealth than most people will acquire in a lifetime, and yet he stayed until his natural death, four years after my father’s.”

“Anyway, I’m getting off the topic.” Steve sat patiently at the table, listening to Tony rattle around the kitchen, compulsively picking up a clean dish. “I must have been very young, because I don’t remember it clearly. And I was very bright, I was reading textbooks by age five, writing my own entries within a year . . . but I don’t remember, exactly, what issues Jarvis read to me. Just—sitting on his lap, in his pressed suit, of all things, back to the headboard and that deep British voice of his, monotoning his way through a brightly-colored comic book. And a part of me was just _enraptured_.”

Steve watched Tony pace the kitchen, proclaiming softly, “That’s the earliest thing I can remember. Not my mother holding me on her lap as Jarvis drove us to the doctor in the middle of the night because I’d fallen out of bed and dislocated my shoulder. Not the first time I saw a Tesla coil at a science museum and vowed to do _whatever_ it took to harness the energy floating around in the universe. No—it was Jarvis reading made-up stories about a made-up superhero who was based on a real man who lived a very long time ago, at least in the mind of a four- or five- or three-year-old.

“And I loved it. I would give a very large sum of money to go back and relive that moment. That feeling, that—” He looked out the window into the night. “That security,” he articulated, allowing himself to be vulnerable. “Like it was all going to be okay.” He exhaled and shook his head. “I don’t feel,” and his hands were trembling a little, “like it’s going to be okay anymore. I never do. I am constantly, and I mean _constantly_ , afraid of—” He smiled grimly. “Everything.” He gestured meaninglessly around him. All that energy. All that _potential_.

“You’ve noticed,” Tony said, and Steve didn’t interrupt him, let him speak to his heart’s content, this time, as he elaborated, “her absence. You’ve noticed, everyone’s noticed, how could you not have noticed?” He paced, back and forth. Steve sat at the table, watching. The god of war had no room in this kitchen. The war was all inside Tony, and he could do nothing to eradicate it. He just had to listen. “I don’t sleep. If it wasn’t for Rhodey, she wouldn’t let—and if it wasn’t for my _baby_ , I don’t know what I would—honestly, I think it’s the only reason she lets Morgan stay. She’d—we’d—” His breath grew strangled. “I’m going to lose my baby,” he announced suddenly, hunching over the counter, gripping his chest. “I’m going to—”

Finally, Steve could not take it. He made to stand.

“Daddy?”

Tony Stark slumped briefly, like a puppet with his strings cut, hanging on by tangled threads. Then, carefully, he said, “Morgoona. It’s late.”

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” Morgan asked. She had a bunny clutched under one arm. Steve sometimes forgot, listening to her chatter intelligently about things beyond a five-year-old’s comprehension, that she _was_ only five. “Are we—”

“It’s okay,” Tony whispered, turning to her. “Come here, sweetheart, come here.”

She hesitated in the threshold, sensing it wasn’t okay. She looked at him, and then at Steve. “Morgan,” Tony said, strangled. “It’s okay.”

“Daddy’s scared,” Morgan confided to Steve. Then she squeezed her bunny tightly and stepped forward. “It’s okay, Daddy,” she told him.

Steve was afraid Tony was about to cry in front of his daughter, exhausted and wretchedly worn out. But he managed to hold himself together, crouching and picking her up with a subtle strength that rarely showed on the surface. “My little bug,” he murmured. “You are an awful lot of trouble.”

“I’m a wonderful amount of trouble,” Morgan said freely, pressing the bunny against his chest. “Lulu will protect you.”

Tony kissed Morgan’s cheek, and then the top of Lulu’s head. “Thank you, Lulu,” he told the bunny, rocking Morgan gently. “Thank you, Morgan.” Sighing, he said, “Let’s go—read a story. It’s past bedtime, little miss.”

“I love you, Daddy,” Morgan said softly.

Steve wished he wasn’t even in the same room as Tony pressed another, longer, more desperate kiss to his daughter’s cheek. “I love you. Daddy would di—do anything for you.”

Steve waited until they were gone before quietly dumping out both cups of coffee.

Then he sat on the couch in the dark living room and waited.

It took a while for Tony to join him. He limped downstairs like he’d been wounded in battle and needed to get to safe ground. Still, somehow, he was quite about it. He did not want to wake his daughter twice.

Tony made no pretenses, this time—he simply collapsed on top of Steve, too desperate to be picky. Steve didn’t mind at all; they’d slept like sardines in the barracks, making use of body warmth when powered heat was not available. He was lucky, as an officer, to receive his own tent and cot. Still, there were nights he missed being packed in like otters, assured on all sides that a stray bullet would have to fight its way to get to him. Maybe it was mean that the subconscious was placated by such things—but the conscious was comforted on a different level, knowing that there were people who were ready to fight alongside him, right there.

He missed, suddenly and intensely, the entire team. Asterion—The Minotaur. Hermes, who had told him to live his best life and then had died on Vormir in the bargain. Thor, so damn happy-go-lucky, once—and had they ever appreciated how delightfully kind a fifteen-hundred-year-old god could be to them before that fleeting window was ripped away from them? Athena. His sister-in-arms, his staunchest ally and most elusive enemy. And Vulcan. Vulcan, warm as a hearth and pressed against him, terrified of the future, unaware of how lucky he was to have another day when he hadn’t lost the opportunity for good. He was simply battle shocked, and nobody was really helping him.

 _What team are we?_ Ares thought, wrapping his arms around Vulcan as he trembled mutely. _What kind of family have we broken into?_

Already, gears were churning in his head. They had to find Bruce, reel him in. They had to have a funeral for Clint, if they hadn’t already. They had to see to it that Thor’s people were taken care of, that _Thor_ was taken care of. And they had to rebuild, for Athena. They had to coalesce, to rally the guard, because he would not subject her—or any of them, not one survivor—to abandonment.

War had torn them apart. Now, War had to bring them together again.

. o .

Tony fell asleep on top of him, sometime in the early morning. Steve allowed himself just ten minutes to appreciate it—Tony Stark, _at rest_ —before he was forced to act before a certain five-year-old showed up. In incremental adjustments, he sat up, gathered Tony in his arms, and carried him upstairs. He laid him down gently, and tucked the cover over him. He made sure the curtains were still drawn, then slipped outside the room, shutting the door carefully.

He hadn’t had a chance to get his own two-hour sleep-cycle in, but that was all right. He had functioned for days on no sleep, although his judgment certainly slipped after three nights in a row. That an ordinary human being could even survive such a thing was hard to imagine, yet Tony routinely stayed awake far more nights than he should have.

Focusing his energy on the task at hand, Steve plodded downstairs, rooted around for a bit, and found pancake mix.

His instincts were good, and not long after, a bouncy, hungry five-year-old showed up. “Where’s Daddy?” she asked him.

“He’s sleeping,” Steve replied, surprised at the lump it put in his throat, even though it was true. It sounded like—something one _would_ say to a child, devastated by loss, unable to comprehend the magnitude, yet. “Do you want pancakes?”

“Yes, please.” Morgan still had Lulu the bunny with her. “Lulu says ‘yes, please,’ too.”

“Two batches, coming up,” Steve replied, and lifted her so she could sit on the counter. “Can you be good?”

“Uh-huh.” She watched him cook, asking him the occasional question, like, _Where’s Mommy?_ or _Can we build a fort?_ Five-year-old questions. “No blueberries,” Morgan said. “Only Daddy likes blueberries. Mommy likes cantaloupe. Can you spell cantaloupe? C-A-N-T-L-U-P. Cantaloupe!”

She really was Tony Stark’s daughter, Steve thought, overcome with parental affection. He didn’t even correct her spelling—the fact that she’d come close was a feat—but instead smiled privately. “Mommy doesn’t like C-A-N-T-A-U-P-E on her pancakes,” Morgan went on, kicking her feet. “She likes whipped cream. I like whipped cream. Can we have whipped cream?”

Steve caught himself before he said, _Ask your Daddy_ , because he didn’t want her to do just that and ruin what might be Tony’s only good nap in days. “Does your Daddy let you have whipped cream on your pancakes?” he rephrased.

“Uh-huh,” Morgan said, plainly enough it seemed sincere. “He likes it, too. Almost as much as blueberries. He _really_ likes blueberries. Do you like blueberries?”

“Sure,” Steve said, dappling a pancake with some. “I like all kinds of fruit.”

“Really? What about . . . _kiwifruit_?”

“Kiwifruit?” Steve repeated. “What the he—heck’s a kiwi?”

Morgan giggled at his near-miss. “Kiwi is a groundless, nocturnal bird native only to New Zealand,” she recited, still kicking her feet. “Kiwi is also a furry brown berry with a sweet green interior found in New Zealand. They are a good source of _fiber_ ,” she finished with triumphant zeal.

Steve flipped the pancake. “You’re a smart kid, you know that?”

“Uh-huh.”

That startled a little laugh out of Steve. He kept it down, afraid Tony would come pounding down the stairs at any moment and demand why he hadn’t woken him. Tony trusted him to live in his house. Besides—this much, he could handle. Cooking for others, keeping them company. Even astute five-year-olds had simple needs.

“I need down now,” Morgan announced. “I have to go potty.”

That, too.

. o .

“Dragon fruit is a fruit that is native to Mexico and Central America. Today, it is grown all around the world. It tastes like kiwi spit.”

Steve paused mid-pancake flip. “It tastes like—”

“Kiwi spit,” Morgan repeated primly. “And disappointment,” she added, a belated, delightful add-on. “That’s what Daddy says.” She cut into her pancake with great precision. Steve had offered to help, but she had assured him with a simple, _I can do it_ , that she was all right. To be safe, he had given her a butter knife. “I don’t like dragon fruit,” Morgan added.

“No, that doesn’t sound tasty,” Steve agreed.

“I like chocolate chips,” Morgan offered. “You should make chocolate chip pancakes. Like Mommy makes.”

“Chocolate chip pancakes?” Steve marveled. He knew Tony was rich; he knew the future was wild; he’d been _living_ with both facts for just over a decade. Yet something about the idea of putting chocolate in breakfast food still appalled him. It was like . . . like _pizza_ for breakfast. Something was just wrong about it. “Sounds like a Mommy thing.”

“I miss Mommy,” Morgan said. “Can we see her?”

Steve flipped the pancake onto the plate. “Maybe.”

“Okay.” Morgan carefully shoveled a bite off her plate into her mouth, Lulu the bunny tucked under one arm. “Mm!”

“Good?”

“Uh-huh. What’s your favorite fruit, Mr. Captain Rogers?”

Steve said, “You can call me ‘Cap,’ scout,” and thought about it. He poured out batter for another pancake, then said, “Candied apples,” just to see what would happen.

“That’s not a fruit, Mr. Rogers,” Morgan said.

“Sure, it is. Right in the name—candied ‘apples.’”

“That’s candy,” Morgan said. “Like Froot Loops. Mommy says Froot Loops are candy.”

“Huh,” Steve said, wondering if he should mentally file that away or set it in the _to be discarded_ mental pile. Barton sure had eaten a lot of it for breakfast—among favorites like Frosted Flakes (“They’re more than good; they’re GRREAT!” “You know, the first half woulda answered my question, Barton”) and Cap’n Crunch, which Steve was sure was somehow a barb at him, although he could not figure out _how_ for the life of him—but Clint was hardly the best judge of what was and was not appropriate in the 21st century.

The thought of never seeing Clint again made him almost physically ill. He flipped the slightly burnt pancake over. “Mommy likes breakfast sammiches. Daddy likes whipped cream.”

“Daddy’s sleeping,” Steve reminded, flipping his last pancake onto his stack of six. “Is there something quiet you wanna do?”

“I wanna build a fort,” Morgan said.

Five-year-old dreams, Steve mused, carefully carving off sizeable bites from his pancakes with fork and knife. The sweet tang of blueberries really added to the whole experience, he had to admit. He wished fresh fruit was as plentiful back home as it was now.

Even thinking of it as _back home_ helped. _Back then_ was too distant, but home would always be home.

. o .

They built a fort, all right. Steve was actually kind of proud of it, for a guy who’d never aspired to be an architect. They’d found blankets in a spare closet on the ground level and set up shop in the living room. Bold choice, Steve had to admit, as it was most likely to inhibit traffic, but it was down to him, Colonel Rhodes, and Tony, anyway, with the occasional interloper showing up, hopefully with ample warning. 

He desperately wanted Tony to sleep, and he wasn’t even surprised that Jimmy wasn’t up yet, given the late night nature of his conversation. He deserved a rest, too, Steve thought, lying flat on his belly and watching _Scooby Doo_ with Morgan, who was curled up around his arm, almost like a pillow. “Which one’s Scooby again?” Steve asked, knowing full well it was the dog.

Morgan pointed Scooby out on screen patiently. “That’s Shaggy,” she said, pointing to the man in the green shirt. “And that’s Velma—”

Steve felt his own eyelids beginning to droop a little, the inane chatter and comfortable setting threatening to put him down faster than three cooked turkeys on Thanksgiving, but then he heard Colonel Rhodes say, “I feel left out,” and Morgan squirmed to get out from under the blanket tunnel to greet him.

“Uncle Rhodey!” she said, freeing herself at last. Steve stayed where he was, pausing the movie and shimmying out from under the blankets. “Come in our fort, Uncle Rhodey!” Morgan invited.

“Oh, you know I would,” Colonel Rhodes said. “My back’s just a little sore this morning. How about we sit on the couch?”

Morgan pouted, but she acquiesced with a nod. “Lulu!” she cried, making Steve wince at the unexpected volume, before sighing happily as he handed her the bunny. She shoved it against her face. “You’re okay, Lulu!”

“Shh, honey,” Colonel Rhodes chided softly. “Your Daddy’s still sleeping, and he needs his rest, okay?”

“Sorry,” Morgan whispered.

“Do I smell pancakes, or does my nose deceive me?”

“I’ll make more,” Steve offered, already getting up. His own aches weren’t so bad, today; he assured, “Won’t take me long.”

“You’re a good man, Cap,” Colonel Rhodes said, sitting down on the couch and allowing Morgan to climb all over him, tablet in hand. “All right, what’re we watching?”

“Scooby Doo!”

. o .

Ares took a walk by himself.

He traversed the lake from end-to-end, then climbed over a little hill.

Some questioned how the Greeks and Romans could celebrate their gods, if the so-called _gods_ lived at the top of a climbable mountain.

To that, Steve replied, _Where else would you have us?_

They were part of the people in a very real way. They were champions for, and the highs and lows of, humanity.

Steve sat on his little mountaintop, absorbing the scenery, the sunshine, the perennially light breeze. They called this time of year _spring_ so that flowers might spring forth after their long wintry sleep, but winter was still in the air, in the slow rising of the sun. Winter was demanding; summer would win not by default.

As he sat, Steve realized he was waiting for Hermes to join him. Often, in the earliest hours, they would gather and talk about their plans for the future. Hermes had many—he longed to traverse the world, to see the highest mountaintop and explore the vast ocean. A weekend in the Rockies was a fun getaway; spending time at the beach was enjoyable so long as he could bring games to play, beach balls and shovels for the sand. 

Hermes was fast on his feet and mischievous, enjoying the game of the gods. He wasn’t strong like they were, wasn’t in the same class as the greats, but he was ever-present in their stories because he _made_ himself present, provided usefulness to the nigh-omnipotent gods. In return, they made him one of them, memorialized him in their ranks.

Hermes was master of many trades, among them thievery, tongues, and trade. He could bargain across the world to get what he needed and slip any noose with luck on his side. He was skilled at animal husbandry, and one needed only to look at Clint Barton’s farm to see how much he enjoyed being a shepherd.

 _He had two sons and a daughter_.

That—was not entirely true. Barney Barton, Clint’s older, wiser brother, had married Laura Whitfield and had two children before his sudden death. It was a car accident. Clint, who had always revered and admired his reckless pathfinder, who had always been close with his sister-in-law, had stepped in to assist in the aftermath, to console and comfort—and help raise the garden. For years, Laura had been happy with two children, but Barney and she had wanted a third, and she had gone ahead through modern means to make it happen.

Steve thought about the boys and the daughter, whose mother had lost a husband and now a favorite brother. He thought to himself, _I must see them soon_ , and wondered who had first broken the news. He had not arrived quite early enough to pick up the wreckage—had missed his own funeral, for starters—but he had arrived before the dust could truly settle. _Someone needs to check in on them_.

It was frankly difficult and somewhat terrifying to imagine a future without one of his brothers-in-arms. He had done it before, of course—he had lived through the Second Great War, lost every companion but one, one who had barely remembered him.

(In Greek mythology, Ares’ only love, Aphrodite, was married to another god.

Was it an accident, a joke, or a coincidence that the only god Ares would ever love was love herself?)

. o .

They were gods, not rulers—they came to be among the people, not to sculpt them into a new society. Yet their presence was spreading—Bellerophon and Perseus were prime examples—and it would only be a matter of time before society had to decide to embrace them or cast them out. _Do you look upon us with joy and wonder?_ Ares thought, staring into his own haunted eyes. _Or fear?_

It was no surprise that even among the gods, they quarreled to be king. Thor laughed over his title, a self-assured ruler, but he had greatness under his belt. Loki was a prime example of a god who would never be satisfied with anything less than kingship.

Vulcan had been destined for greatness. In a way, they all had—Athena and Ares were both descended from Zeus. Yet when it came time to rule over their own pantheon, strangely, one-by-one, they conceded.

“I don’t want to rule the world,” Vulcan had said, picking over his basket of bread. _I want to live and die by my forge_.

“No, no, I couldn’t,” Asterion had laughed, the mere notion of the monster championing the new age impossible for mere mortals to understand. He had shrunk into his chair and repeated softly, earnestly, “I couldn’t.”

“Your people’s problems are hardly a thing I could devote myself wholly to,” Thor had conceded on a breath.

Hermes had not spoken out at all, declining the invitation to be mocked by the gods. _You mean to rule us?_ Head in hand, he had watched the procession patiently, for once silent.

Ares had looked to Athena, giving her the last chance to take the stand. She had held his gaze for a long little while, waiting him out. Alone among them, he had been covered in war paint—the bloody wounds, the pound of flesh and blood hacked off by inhuman hands. _This is who I am_ , he had not argued among them. _This is where I belong._

 _I am the god of war_.

“I think the role should go to the _Captain_ , don’t you?” Natasha had said at last, casting her vote.

“Aye,” Thor had responded.

Bruce had nodded; Clint had chanted, “Hear, hear.”

Ares had met Vulcan’s eyes. Vulcan had said nothing, refusing to give praise to a _god_.

 _I, too, am divine_.

“Then it’s settled,” Steve Rogers had said, reaching for the first time for his shawarma.

. o .

It took death to learn his own name. Death and— _rebirth_.

He had been Ares since the day he was reborn. The harbinger of the new war, the last thing his blood enemies ever saw, the peak of masculine courage and strength. Ares took the world by storm, and the world roared with gladness. The world was already at war when they knighted their new god; the world was ready for him.

The world was not ready for him, Ares thought, taking the stage and looking out into a sea of faces. They had mixed feelings about him, now, after everything. He had a beard, and his uniform was tattered, and he looked—

. . . _there is something about him that strikes the observer as almost not human; and I do not mean this to frighten readers, rather, to comfort them—that if, Divine Providence were to descend quietly and become man, not for the sake of redemption but an act of cosmic companionship, one could see it in his eyes, his self-assurance, his simplified strength, every movement deliberate, every thought actionable and reasonable; for the way he walked the Earth—all the while, comforting the Sick, attending to the Dead, fearless in Battle and well-versed in Victory—was like a man who did not look like a man at all but a god—_

“We won,” Ares announced to the hushed world.

“We confronted the mad Titan Thanos. And when he was at his greatest strength, we took the sword and gauntlet from his hands, and—” _I died for you_. “And we unmade him.”

The ripple of awe that surged through them was equally fearful and excited. _Will you unmake us next?_ it asked, and Ares knew his language was too strong. He tempered it—

_He speaks every language you throw at him. It seems like a trick, yet, no matter how rare, he recites back in your own tongue the words that your mother spoke. As you lie dying, there he kneels, holding your cold, bloody hand in his own, taking you by the shoulder and assuring with words you will hear that you will pass over gently into the night. What better way to die, in these most wicked and tumultuous and unforgiving of times, than in Captain America’s arms?_

“Thanos is no more. He won’t return.” _And neither will the Avengers_. How could they? How could they possibly go back to what they were? This, the final stand, not on the battlefield at all but on stage in front of flashing cameras. “And those who are like him, will find themselves—” _at war_ , “outmatched.”

The ripple grew in volume and appreciation. And yet, doubt from the panel: “Rumor has it you were mortally wounded, Captain,” asked a journalist paid to say it out loud and on camera. “You seem in good health today.”

“I would not be here without the efforts of my team,” Steve said, neither a lie nor a full truth. “The battle took its toll. We lost many of our own.” To name them all would take _hours_. “I am. . . .” He was not sure what to say.

_I feel fortunate to have met him, once. Knowing how many desire to touch the hand of God, I wonder if they would feel comforted to have known this remarkable being once walked the Earth, that there have been, directly and among us, extraordinary people. And I do not mean to blaspheme the true God—only to say that His work is great, and splendiferous, and unusual, and perhaps expressed in ways we are not even looking for. To meet Captain America, you will understand; to hear about him, you might call me mad, deluded. That I have the opportunity to print this for the general public is proof that I am not alone in this “delusion.” I do not think there is a mortal on this Earth who would not be awed, in some way, by him. It is only regretful that not everyone was able to shake hands with him before his untimely passing._

“I take full responsibility for these losses,” Steve said. “I know there are many. They remain mine to bear.”

(In the weeks coming, they will call him the new _Atlas_. And he will seethe in private, _That is not my_ name.)

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” he went on, “but we’ll rebuild it by the hour. Let us continue to remake, stone by stone, what we have lost: a home. It is time to rejoice.

“It is time to live again,” proclaimed the god of war.

. o .

_One month later_.

“Did I know? How dumb do you think I am?” Themis demanded. Fury leaned across the table—how immortal matters always ended up at the kitchen table was an endless curiosity and cause for a rare smile, in Ares’ book—and pointed out, “You think I couldn’t see what was happening? I read stories about you, Ares.” He did not say it in the joking manner that people spoke of him as Atlas, the world-carrier, the still soul doomed to stand steady so others could run. He spoke of it like he _meant_ it. “And when I saw you in the ice, I knew we hadn’t dug up any old war hero. _You_. . . were something more.”

Steve’s heart was beating steadily, but there was excitement coursing through his veins, emboldened, awake, alive. “And I know the real story,” Themis went on conversationally. “I heard all about you. Right through the heart.” He leaned forward and jabbed a finger against Steve’s chest demonstratively. “No big speeches, in the end. Not a bad way to go. Quick. Painless, even.”

Steve had not slept well since that day, and it was near to him, Tony’s almost _melted_ face. “You’ve seen a lot of ghosts,” Fury distracted him. “Haven’t you?”

Steve nodded mutely. “I—” He hesitated. “It wasn’t easy, getting here,” he confided. Fury had always been like a parent to him; Themis and Ares had never interacted in lore, but Steve should have died decades ago. The story kept marching on. “I lost—”

“Everything,” Fury filled in.

Steve nodded tamely.

“Seemed to have gotten most of it back,” Fury remarked, silently asking, _What is different?_

“A lot of it,” Steve agreed elusively. He looked up before Vulcan appeared in the doorway.

“Director,” Vulcan greeted coolly.

“Stark,” Themis replied. “Come in. Have a seat.”

“Think I’m just fine here, thanks.” Tony looked over both of them. “Or we could take it outside.”

They did—it was a beautiful summer day, after all, and the house felt—weirdly empty. “You two have gotten awfully domestic,” Themis said, almost uninterrupted but a new tape, a new conversation.

Tony sat in a chair and said, “Can’t get rid of him.”

Steve took no offense. He knew Tony had all but begged him to stay when Colonel Rhodes had left. _I can’t be alone_ , he’d gritted out. Steve understood; despite Sam’s generous offers to stay with him for a while, he knew Sam needed _room_. Ares was _heavy_. Ares was _brooding_. 

Yet it was that heaviness that centered Tony, like his own gravitational field was too wobbly to support itself. He needed somewhere to focus. Ares _was_ the god of civil order.

“Just send me a wedding invitation,” Fury deadpanned. Tony twitched, a flinch he transformed into a movement, directing his gaze out over the water. “How goes it with the missus?”

“Good. Uh.” Tony spoke to the water. “Really, really good.” Then, abruptly: “We’re—taking some time.”

Steve was surprised he would confide in Fury—in front of _Steve_ , no less. But Themis _was_ the Titaness of judgment. Fury was probably the farthest thing from a woman Steve could immediately conceptualize, but the name— _Themis_ —rang true. “You think that’ll help?” Fury asked.

Tony shrugged. “It’s—not the worst idea I’ve ever had.”

“Yes, that was lying about radiation poisoning.”

Steve’s gaze flicked between them. “I beg your—”

“It was a long time ago, it’s not a thing,” Tony muttered under his breath. _Drop it_.

“Radiation—”

“Poisoning, okay, we’re talking about it.” Tony actually picked up his chair and turned it so he could continue resting his chin in hand and elbow on the edge but glare at the two of them, seated side-by-side across from him. “Let’s play _who’s made the most questionable decisions—_ Steve, why don’t you go first?”

It was actually comical, how Steve and Fury looked at each other at the same moment. Still, they both held a straight face. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Ares said calmly, feigning ignorance to his own transformation—and the darkness that underlaid it.

“The only regret I have is not bringing my own donuts,” Fury said. Something in Tony’s expression opened, and Steve realized that he honestly expected rebuke. _Judgment comes for us all_. “I thought you had a private obsession. I can see now—”

“I—it—I can’t have them in the house,” Tony said, lifting his head before waving the same hand loosely. “Morgan—”

And the good feeling was gone.

“Your daughter?” Fury prompted, almost gently.

Tony sighed. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose.

Steve offered, “It’s all temporary—”

“Let me ask you a question, be honest here, you were given the choice between the crazy guy with the history in weapons making, or the stable CEO of a thriving tech company, who do you bestow custody on?” he asked, all in a breath.

Fury and Steve shared another, briefer look. “That bad?” Fury verbalized.

Tony grinned. “I’m just looking ahead.”

Steve started, “Pepper wouldn’t—” and Tony just gave him this baleful _look_.

“Let me put this in language you’ll understand,” he said, still quipping, still talking almost too fast to follow. “This is your daughter. You want the best for her, don’t you? Nothing you wouldn’t do. And you sure as shit wouldn’t leave her with a—” Vulcan huffed in a breath. His hand shook when he ran it over his mouth. “We wanted to make it work,” he said, not looking at them. “It was working. It was. Three-step plan, you know—and I was _good_. I dropped the bottle.” He looked at Fury, then Steve, holding his gaze. “I didn’t break, I didn’t do anything _wrong_. But she—she wants a normal life. What the hell is a normal life, anyway?”

War and Judgment sat quietly. Vulcan _fidgeted_. “I won’t ask you two how you do it, because neither of you are _normal_ ,” he snapped. “I never wanted it. I was out, I was _good_ —” He drew in a breath. “I stayed aground and now I’m back—in the middle of the ocean. Because of you two.”

“If you want an insincere apology, I’ll give it,” Themis said. Tony stared at him, and Themis went on. “But I don’t regret it. I don’t regret giving Iron Man that _push_. And I don’t regret what he made you into, Tony. Sometimes . . . sometimes, we’re _vulcanized_ by the things that scare us most. Like water on a hot iron. You’d think water would kill fire. And it does. But the thing that comes out—that’s not broken. That’s _steel_. And that—that is what we made. Together.” 

Fury looked at Ares, too, adding calmly, “We could’ve left you in the ice. Some advocated for it.” He let the pause linger; Steve didn’t need Tony to confess verbally to see the way he _stilled_ , caught. “Said there wasn’t anything to save. You’d be dead, one way or another, after seventy years with not one neuron firing. But I said. . . .” He looked at Tony, then, before meeting Ares’ gaze once more: “‘You don’t kill a man that strong like that. Get him the hell out of there. Or he will do it himself. And he won’t be happy when he does.’”

Steve tried to fathom what went on behind that one eye, so full of awareness, of _potentiality_. Of the future, it seemed, in ways no time or space or even reality stone yielded. That Fury could see him getting out _on his own_ was incredible, almost unbelievable. But he looked into that eye and knew, like the writers of old who depicted him, that it was the truth.

Ares would rise again. No matter how long it took, he would awaken from his sleep.

Seventy years felt like a long time to wait. But it was nothing compared to centuries. _Millennia_.

An Ares in a world _that_ removed was not an Ares that Steve Rogers cared to meet.

( _I will kill you all if you try to keep me another day_.)

It sickened Ares that he wasn’t thinking hypothetically. It hadn’t been surprising that Fury had tried to show both hands were off his gun ( _I come in peace_ ) while keeping one thumb on the trigger ( _I know you don’t_ ). Fury had tried to contain him, in those earliest days. He had failed—Steve had broken containment every time. It had built resentment. It should have destroyed their relationship. 

It hadn’t. 

Ares continued to stand beside Themis, calm and collected, because Themis had never _mis_ judged him. Fury had used exactly as much force as he had _had_ to convince Steve that the twenty-first century was not personally out to get him and might need his help.

_Ares, Ares, where the hell are you?_

Somehow, it was only playing cards covered in blood that spoke to him. _This is war. Are you going to bleed or run?_

Ares bled for the world, and he loved it. Loved the fire in his veins, thundering in his heart, affirming in every movement that he was alive, and here, and _right_. He was bettering the world by being in it. He was the god of civil order, of calm in calamity, of monsters buried in the hearts of men. He did not shy from Asterion or dismiss Hermes; he did not seek vengeance on his sister Athena, his fellow goddess of war; and he did not fear Thor, otherworldly as he might be.

Vulcan alone he quarreled with, because _Vulcan quarreled with him_.

Here they sat, on opposing sides, once again. Ares thought it was appropriate that Judgment sat beside _him_ , within arm’s reach. 

Maybe Vulcan saw his own place the same way—looking into the face of Judgment, near enough to reach out and clasp hands, to ally himself with Truth while War sat and contemplated his victory.

 _We were never on opposing sides_ , a part of Ares wanted to snap at them. _We were always on the same team_ —

Vulcan snapped his fingers at him, gathering his attention. Steve glowered at him, briefly, then reeled in his emotions. He didn’t know where they were coming from, except he felt like he hadn’t had a real emotion in a long time, a chance to shed his own blood in decades. 

_Lay down your lives for me, you, mortal folk_ , he thought, and banished it.

He was ready, willing, and unable to die for them. Because the world _needed_ him.

“It’s been a difficult time,” Themis summarized for them. “Everyone is still finding their feet. Who expects you to have yours? No one is taking your daughter away, Stark,” he affirmed, simply, plainly, and Steve—he felt for Tony, he really did, a pang running through him at the mere thought of losing Morgan. Even the lonely handful of days she had spent with Pepper and her family, because she needed to get back out in the world, but Tony could not abandon his safe haven, was—well, it was _lonely_. Steve felt the echoing absences.

 _It is time to go home, Tony_.

. o .

“He’s going to kill me,” Tony whispered, trembling hand near his mouth like he would stop the words and couldn’t bear to. “He’s going to—”

“I won’t let him,” Ares promised, sitting on the grass while Vulcan paced under the moonlight, wearing himself away.

“You can’t stop him,” Tony accused, voice rising.

“I already did,” Steve reminded.

Tony paced, and paced, and anguished. “He’s bigger than us. He came back once. He’ll do it again.”

 _And if he does, I will cut off his head_. “He won’t,” Steve said firmly.

“He’s going to do it again,” Tony whispered, hand shaking so hard. “What’s stopping him? The dead don’t _die_.”

And that was the heart of the matter, wasn’t it? Steve watched him, silent. He thought of Themis’ words, early: _If you want, I can apologize insincerely_. He wasn’t sorry for being alive, but he could lie and say he regretted it, seeing the anguish it caused. He _did_ regret the anguish.

 _Every war has its toll_.

Ares rose to his feet. Vulcan paused, then pointed at him, saying, “You shouldn’t be alive.”

“I’m not,” Steve said. “Not yours.” That hurt. He saw it weigh on Tony, too—and saw the flicker of mirrored comprehension. _And you’re not mine_. “I won’t let him hurt you, Tony,” Steve promised. He’d kept it once; he would keep it again. And again, and again. As many times as he had to.

_Why can’t I save them all?_

Tony crossed the distance in brisk strides, weighed heavily on his chest. There was a slight dip where the arc reactor used to be. Reconstructive surgery had done things undreamt of, prior to the anomaly that was Vulcan and his machine. But it hadn’t been perfect, and under his thin shirt, Steve could feel the divot, the emptiness, his own missing pound of flesh.

They’d done their best—a damn good job—but it was still noticeable.

Slowly, Ares wrapped his arms around Vulcan, wordlessly affirming.

. o .

_Where do the gods run, when they are afraid?_

Sometimes, Steve thought that they followed him because they were afraid to oppose him. That they had chosen his side in the poorly named _war_ because they didn’t want to see what vengeance he would reap on them, when he came back to power. His exile would not last forever. They had known that, even if they hadn’t had a name for it.

But a quieter, kinder side of him begged to differ: it pointed to quiet nights when Dr. Banner came to sit with him in the communal room, laptop in hand, mind elsewhere but presence steadier under Ares’ watch. To Clint, who had his own little family and still wanted to be part of theirs, daring them all to cast him out and yet taking his place at the righthand of the king, like he could not be hurt if he resided there. ( _I have failed you so damn much_.) Even Thor, who had a kingdom, a blood brother, and the power of Odin on his side, came to offer Ares gifts, to share his drink and sit beside him, deferring to his judgment on the battlefield.

They pried him with jokes and unsuccessful attempts to get him drunk (Thor alone almost succeeded; he was wise enough to keep his mouth shut to prevent blowing his own cover, unlike Vulcan, who always gave himself away). They kept him fed and clothed and sheltered, so that he would stay with them, and love them. And he did love them.

He loved when Natasha spent time with him, teaching him how to fight because _bloodlust can only take you so far_. They traded barbs but came together in a way that could not be articulated—if she asked him for his cloak, his name, and his legacy, he would have piled them at her feet without question. 

He needed none of it—his uniform was a reflection of the people who made it, not the man who wore it, and his name was _Ares_ , no matter what they called him on the outside. His legacy? Bloody trading cards were his legacy.

Athena never seemed afraid, not in the sense that she wanted to avoid the suffering ahead. She only seemed sad, at times, that the suffering was upon them. _This is what is inevitable_ , she seemed to say, as they watched the world burn from a distance.

When Aphrodite died, Ares expected to be alone. Vulcan had scorned him; Hermes was nowhere to be found; Thor was missing-in-action; and Asterion remained the beast in the labyrinth, impossible to find. Standing in the empty church, Ares lingered, weak with grief.

He had loved just one person in his entire mythos. And now, she was dead.

When Athena came to him, his relief was a physical thing, a tangible gratitude. She was small but strong in his arms—huge, ox arms, designed to rip machinery apart, viscerally, as he would be forced to do to stop Vulcan from killing Bellerophon.

When he was weak and spiritually in shambles, Athena came to him. And yet, it was he who kept her side warm on the darkest, coldest nights, he who stood beside her when the world turned its back on them. _I don’t like contracts_ , she had said to him, once. _I don’t like chains_ , he had heard, and nodded to.

Politics were fleeting. He had thought family was stronger.

But the gods were always at war. It was practically in their nature, never mind Ares’ aid. Instigator, corruptor, impostor—how quickly the world could turn on what it had once rejoiced at. Ares hadn’t changed at all. But the world had.

Vulcan didn’t come to him. Vulcan didn’t call. Vulcan didn’t want Ares to see him, weak and vulnerable. Ares survived the long, dark days with half his family in tow; Vulcan had Set, and Set alone.

Steve suspected that Hermes, at least, had thought Vulcan would join them, once he saw how the scales had tipped in their favor. But Vulcan could not run away with them, not when he was tied down with so many strings of his own making—his company, his reputation, his _people_ , however few. They stood with Secretary Ross and his Accords. They condemned the rogue gods.

Ares did not flee; he tactfully retreated. He could have burned them to the ground. But he didn’t want to. He wanted them to come _together_.

“Do you ever sleep?” Vulcan asked after sunrise, looking tired but rested.

Ares sat on the porch looking out over the water and did not respond immediately. _Slept for seventy years._ “You ready?”

Vulcan gave a meaningful shudder, dropping onto the step next to him. “Are you?”

 _No_. Steve said nothing.

“Thought so.” Tony leaned against his shoulder. Then, because he was Tony Stark, he turned his head and bit down, through shirt and skin. It wasn’t painful, more brattish than provocative. After a moment, he let go, retreated. “You didn’t snap my neck.”

“Why would I?”

“Because.” Tony looked him over. “I’m a thorn in your side. Be easier if I was—” Tony went very still as Steve clasped a hand over his shoulder. “Do I get a last word?”

Steve thought of slamming the shield into the suit to disable it. He thought of the look of terror in Tony’s eyes as he flung both gauntleted hands in front of his face.

 _Ares would have decapitated you_.

Sliding the hand to Tony’s neck, Steve waited for retaliation. It didn’t come. He stroked cold skin with his thumb. “No,” he decided, Tony’s eyes wide, his expression frozen between exposing his vulnerability and making a stand for his life.

Steve _could_ snap his neck, with one hand. That was perhaps the most terrifying difference between them. Vulcan’s core strength was his forge. Ares—was a _monster_.

Steve braced their foreheads against each other. Tony exhaled. There was a hint of whiskey on his breath, but it was barely a whiff. His eyes were clear and sober when Steve let him go.

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” Steve repeated solemnly.

Tony nodded. Gaze flicking over him. “I trust you.”

. o .

“What an honor,” said the interviewer, Joshua, robustly. “I must be the first person in ten years to sit down with Captain America.”

Ares didn’t like the lights, the camera, the action. He sat still, almost sullen, in his chair. 

“So, before we begin—how are you, Captain?”

 _Call me by my name_. “I’m well,” Steve allowed.

_I’m a little tired. My back aches. I can’t feel most of my left arm._

“Right. Well—what’s happening with the Avengers? Will they—”

Steve let the babble roll over him, crossing one leg over the other, resting an arm on the chair, large enough he should have felt dwarfed in it. Playing the tape back, he only looked strong on his throne, wearing his black suit.

 _We’re still in mourning,_ Tony had suggested, smoothing down the suit for him. _Probably not the time to break out the red, white, and blue_.

“What are your thoughts, Captain?” prompted Joshua.

Steve said plainly, “The Avengers won’t be the same.”

“How do you mean?” Joshua pressed, when Steve didn’t offer more.

Steve met him halfway: “We’ve suffered losses.”

“Ah, yes. Hawkeye.”

Steve nodded again. 

“My condolences,” Joshua offered.

 _He lives on. Elsewhere_. “Thank you.” Steve smoothed a thumb over the couch, relishing the material. They really spared no expense for these superhero interviews, he mused. Tony’s doing, mostly. They had to look sharp, composed, on camera, and that included the scenery. Even the lighting and camera placement were more artfully arranged than a traditional setup. Watching it back, it would almost seem unreal, like a reel from a movie.

 _Captain America is larger than life_.

“Paint us a picture, Captain,” Joshua asked him. “What was that morning like? The day you and the Avengers took down Thanos?”

Ares straightened in his chair, flattening both feet on the floor, fixing his gaze on the camera. They told him not to look right into it, but he knew Joshua was asking on behalf of the millions watching. He wished, for a moment, that Tony was there—Tony told better stories—or that he had a script to memorize and read from. Then he let himself speak as nearly from the heart as he could.

This was the duty of the god of war.

“Oh-four-hundred-hours, I’m up. I’m the only one awake.

“I walk the grounds. We’ve been on lockdown for about six hours. Nobody in, nobody out. Team needs the rest, can’t do that with the front door wide open. I call it. We’d been chasing our adversary for five years. The fever pitch of that last leg of the race, even after, is beyond description. But the slowdown was my call.

“You don’t run into battle after a slog through the mountains, unless you absolutely have to. 

“Everybody was willing, but I said no. I want that on record. They were _willing_. I said no. We’d wait ‘til morning. They could do whatever they wanted in that last meantime, but nobody was touching the gauntlet until we’d had a chance to clear our heads.

“I didn’t know,” Ares lied, “that Thanos would show up. I had hoped he would give us more time. But I’m glad we took that time, to recoup. I’d be speaking on behalf of a lot more fallen Avengers if we hadn’t.” He paused.

Joshua finally offered, “We’ve heard the story from other sources, but we’d love to hear it from you, Captain.”

Steve flattened a palm against the couch. “It was right after sunrise. I remember, because the light was coming in the windows sideways.

“We had to decide, now that we had the stones, who would wield the Infinity Gauntlet.” He paused, aware that he had lifted his right hand, like he was waiting for someone to place the gauntlet on it. He looked at his own fingers for a moment, visualizing the stones.

 _They’ll burn you to ash if you touch them_ , mortals warned him.

The purple power stone was perhaps the most dangerous to handle; it demanded the most control, the strongest will, to overcome.

Lowering his hand slowly, Steve looked at the camera and said simply, “Dr. Banner volunteered.”

“It was brave,” Joshua said at once.

Steve looked at him. “You have no idea.”

Joshua cowered a little, responding instinctively to Ares’ dismissal, but the cameras were trained on Steve. Ares spoke to them: “I want you to imagine a little door to another universe. It’s only big enough to stick your hand through, and you can’t see a thing on the other side. All you really know is, every mortal or monster who puts their hand through it, gets destroyed from the inside-out. Their _bones_ liquefy.” Joshua stared, enraptured. The abyss looked deep into Ares’ eyes, carrying with it those who would watch the recording. He spoke to both, articulating the darkness:

“The heat alone burns off every nerve on contact. It’s like the hottest and coldest object you’ve ever touched.” He was saved from his own gaffe— _they don’t know you held it_ —by Joshua’s remark: _in your words_. They knew the story. Dr. Banner’s account had made it to the press, already. But they wanted to hear it from the leader of the Avengers, and any extra detail he provided—well. It was _relished_. 

“Here’s the kicker,” Steve said quietly. “About shoulder-deep into the abyss, is a key. You need that key, or half the universe stays gone. Maybe half of us could survive putting our hands into the fire, wearing the gauntlet for a few seconds. 

“But getting that key—having the strength to reach farther and farther into that _abyss_ —wasn’t something we could all do. We had to send our best shot and hope it was enough.

“Dr. Banner—he was brave. He suffered. And he got the key. He snapped his fingers and saved an inestimable number of lives.”

“Amazing.” Joshua had returned to his former levels of enthusiasm, effusing, “It really is remarkable, how one person could wield that much power and survive. We’re talking about the power to bend the _universe_. Tell me, Captain—how does it feel, knowing that the serum coursing through your veins, inspired the experiments that led to a human person capable of wielding such power?”

“I’d say I have little to do with it,” Steve said, softly, sobered. _It was Erskine’s serum. I was his rat_. “And the people who should receive credit are Dr. Banner and those who helped create the Hulk variance. It’s a heavy price.”

“And indeed it is.” Joshua loosened his collar, like the room was too warm, then went on, “Now, tell me, Captain—what was it like? On that battlefield, what sort of—you were a World War II soldier, did it—”

“Bring back memories?” At Joshua’s nod, Ares said seriously, “I don’t think the war ever leaves you. What you endure for those moments—those triumphal moments—is unspeakable.” And then Ares smiled. “The moment you win . . . that, right there? That feels like being reborn.”

. o .

“People are going to make Renaissance art of you,” Tony sniffed, inhabiting Ares’ sacred space like it belonged to him. “If they haven’t already. I’ve seen the horse paintings.”

( _The horse paintings_ were a bit more tasteful than they sounded. As part of an ongoing _bigger, better, faster_ campaign, overseeing parties had emphasized making Captain America appear as “larger than life” as possible, without edging beyond what was normal and natural. Example: walking on stilts would have been comical, but the prop of a big horse—preferably without saddle—suddenly elevated him to the status of timeless military leader.

Thus, Captain America greeted allies, prepared to lead marches, and stood alone in imposing settings on horseback. The artworks were all based on real events: Steve Rogers really had been told to sit still and look pretty on a horse for a few hours, so a pair of artists could later recreate the actual fast-paced moments in exquisite detail. It helped that he did so during his “free time.” 

That two-hour, nightly interval was a prime target for such activities. The lie that he didn’t need to sleep remained alive and well, but those closest to him knew he needed two hours a night to remain “cheerful and functional.” Functional could be carried out on short cat-naps for weeks on end, but Ares’ easygoing temperament relied on stolen REM cycles in dark hours.

Sometimes, he thought his almost imperceptibly hunched demeanor added to the art’s message, the hint of an impatient snarl adding a visible tension that suited the battlefields they placed him in.)

“I’ve seen the footage,” Steve echoed coolly, which twisted Tony’s features into an appropriately soured grimace.

“They’d love nude sculptures,” Tony breezed. “Nothing says _David_ incarnate like a few—”

“That’s not my name.”

“Of course it’s not. _Ares_.” Tony sneered it. 

Tony knew, too.

 _I see the ghosts_ , Steve did not tell him. _In the shadows, near my bed. Every time I blink, they come closer. Do you see shadows by your bed?_

Ares. Ares. They called him by name. They reached for him. They wanted more from him.

They were going to _strangle_ him.

The doorframe he’d been gripping cracked under his hand. Tony went very still.

“You okay?” Tony asked, monotone, almost nonchalant.

_Ares, Ares, help me, help me._

He turned away from Vulcan, a whiff of a ghost in his peripheral view.

“Don’t run,” Vulcan pleaded. “I can’t lose you.”

Ares gripped the side of his own head, near his hair. He’d rather rip it all out than be the god of _death_.

He took a breath, forced himself to be still and rational. He loosened his grip.

“This place isn’t home anymore,” Tony said, almost talking to himself. “Let’s get away. Together. Like you said.”

 _Like I said_. How many lifetimes ago was that, again?

“C’mon, Steve,” Tony whispered. “Let’s just—go.”

Steve drew in a breath. Released it. The ghosts were in other worlds. They were safe. The universe played dice on its own, no hand needed. It was all very tiring. “Okay.”

“Okay? Okay.” Tony clapped him on the back of the shoulder, nearly shoved him into the hallway. “Good. Great.”

. o .

Rumors circulated about Captain America’s mental state. As far as the people were concerned, he looked— _different_. Some asked if he was a clone, a Skrull; others simply worried he was unstable. Steve Rogers found he didn’t care, very much. _Eyes on Thanos. Eyes on the prize_.

Men had their wars; gods had theirs. The lines weren’t very clear where godly intervention and human supplication crossed.

Horus still did a double-take when Ares showed up at his apartment, shield in hand. 

“Damn,” Horus said. “It looks amazing.”

Tony Stark had done a great job on it. “It’s yours,” Ares said.

Sam looked at the shield, then at him. The frank disbelief was borderline comical. “You’re shitting me.”

Another lifetime, Steve might have smiled. “No. I—”

“No. _Hell_ no. I’m not retiring Captain America. What the hell’s going on?” He grabbed Steve’s jacket, tried to haul him into the apartment. “Come in, come _talk_ to me, don’t just give me your _shield_ —”

“Sam—”

“This is your suicide note, isn’t it? Goddammit.” He tugged more emphatically. Steve went by his own volition, mostly so he could set the shield down nearby. Then Sam hugged him tightly. “We—want—you—here,” he said emphatically, and _ouch_ , that was a gut punch, in a way Sam could surely not have intended.

“Sam,” Steve repeated, quietly. _Let me go. Please. You did, once. Do you remember? You said—_

“Come on, Steve,” Sam pleaded, clinging to him. “You have a _life_.”

_I did. I did, once. I did. I don’t, anymore. Not here, not now, not ever._

“It’s okay.” Steve’s voice was very neutral. “It’s okay, Sam.”

“Like hell it is,” Sam growled. “ _Dammit,_ Steve. Come on, come—”

“I want you to have it,” Steve said, holding his ground, this time, instead of letting Sam tug him to a couch and talk about feelings he could not talk about. _I have an emotion attached to the taste of blood. Is that human?_ “And not for the reason you think.”

“It’s your _shield_ , Steve,” Sam implored.

“No,” Steve said. _It’s_ his _shield_. “Listen to me,” Steve impressed, holding Sam’s gaze. _This will make you like me_. Not just a symbol, a legend—but Horus. Sam seemed to recognize the importance of his message, even if there was pain twisted up in his downturned mouth. He nodded once. “I want you to have this,” he said again. “Not because I’m giving up. But because I want to raise _you_ up.”

“So, you’re retiring.”

 _If only_. “I’m—removing myself from the equation.”

“You know how that sounds, don’t you?”

“It’s just for a while.”

“Oh, good—here I was worried you were gonna kill yourself _forever_.”

“I’m not gonna kill myself.”

Sam held his gaze. Steve didn’t blink. “Dammit,” Sam cursed. “You’re either one hell of a liar—”

“Or I’m telling the truth.”

Sam made an unconvinced little noise. Steve said, slowly and seriously, “Listen to me.”

. o .

“Captain America . . . is more than one man. 

“He has been, for decades, the work of dozens of hardworking men and women. They have written stories about him, designated monuments to his works, even aided him in battle. They have shaped his uniform and his shield. Captain America . . . has always been a community. A community of people, who want to build more gardens than graveyards. Who want to plant seeds for the future, so that our great-grandchildren may climb trees.

“ _That_ is what Captain America has always been about. 

“Every child who has ever held their own shield understands the story. The red, white, and blue honors an American tradition, honors _every American_ under this flag. Neither the shield nor the uniform was made by one person; the idea itself was not executed by one man. It was a team effort. Yet we have placed the greatest burden on one individual.

“We have called upon Captain Rogers to be the face of this campaign for nearly a century. What President has served half as long as Captain Rogers has borne arms for his country? This is a man, who signed up for the most ambitious human trial in history, and promptly went off to serve, in grueling combat, for two years. I ask, what says this contract expires? 

“Why, We, the People. We want Captain America with us, as long as humanly possible. This is a torch we have carried for over eighty _years_.

“How many first responders were inspired by this man who wouldn’t be king, who spoke out for the lowly, the sick, and the poor? Who, himself, was once all of these things? There is something indelibly written in the story of Captain America, that began with a humble New Yorker who wanted only to be the best man for the job.

“We have asked this man to complete this job for almost a century. And we will continue to demand as much of him as he will give until the day he dies. But this is a _job_ —it is a grueling, demanding, ambitious position.

“One no mortal could fill. Right? It’s a job for someone capable of carrying the entire world on their back, someone utterly and completely extraordinary.

“I think it’s time, ladies and gentlemen, to mortalize our heroes again. To think about them, not just as one person, but as an entire community, passing on this legacy, with each new uniform. Because, one day, I assure you, no matter how heroic he seems now, we will have to find a new person to fill these shoes, or the legacy of Captain America will die.

“You don’t want that. You all want a chance to hold the shield, to be _Captain America_ for a little while. You do, don’t you? And you’d like your children to have the opportunity, too, and maybe your grandchildren, as well. 

“Can you imagine how heartbreaking it would be if, after five generations, we extinguished this torch?

“There are not many American stories as profoundly rooted and celebrated as this one. It is the Captain America mythology that has shaped a great part of who we are today.

“Captain Rogers has served his country in the highest role for decades. In the process, he has called upon countless men and women to join him. He has recognized many of them publicly over the years, as comrades, as heroes in their own right. They have been treated like equals in his company.

“Now, go on, imagine it—imagine _you_ are Captain America. Your job—your _mission_ is to embody the American ideals. Courage. Compassion. Commitment. And charity.

“Four words sum it all up nicely, don’t they? Charity—giving more of yourself to others than they expect you to give. Commitment—spending time on a thing which requires it, when it requires it. Compassion—mercy for yourself, your friends, and your enemies. 

“Courage.

“Well, if I needed to explain courage, we’d never have brought Captain America into being in the first place. But we recognize outstanding courage when we see it. He has exemplified these principles from day one.

“Now, I ask you, which of these ideals is exclusive to a man endowed with a certain elixir? Which of these virtues cannot be embodied by you or I, us ordinary Americans? Is there a reason—a single, compelling article—that states that only one man, endowed with a very unique set of characteristics, can possibly carry this mantle?

“I want you to remember this. And I want you to consider this, as we move forward: was Captain America ever supposed to be just one man, or to be _every_ -man?

“Now, as we bring Captain Rogers to the stage, I want to leave this parting sentiment: ‘United, we stand.’ Thank you. And welcome, Captain Rogers.”

. o .

“Thank you, Shar—Ms. Carter. 

“One of my earliest memories of being Captain America was being on-stage, just like this, except I was in front of a regiment of soldiers. They weren’t very impressed with me, I’ll admit. My uniform was a bit—campier. And my shield was made of wood. Written on the back of it, in big print near the top, it said, _DON’T FORGET TO LOOK UP_.

“I always thought that was a silly thing to say. ‘Don’t forget to look up.’

“Of course, it was an instruction, not actually meant to be read out loud. I didn’t realize at the time how important that instruction would become. How it would focalize my life.

“Mortalize, focalize. Big words for little things. We’re all—a little vulnerable. More than we care to think about. And we’re all, at times, guilty of losing sight of a good thing because we were so focused on something else.

“We all forget to look up.

“When I first got here, I was overwhelmed by—well, everything. Every little thing was new to me.

“The hardest thing about starting over isn’t starting over. It’s letting go. Leaving behind everything you were so you can become something new.

“Sam Wilson helped me start over.

“You probably know him as Falcon, and if you don’t—we must not be reading the same ‘Avengers Almanac.’

“Sam and I’ve worked together for almost ten years. He’s been my eyes-in-the-skies; pulled me out of the fire more times than I can count. Before he worked with me, he rescued wounded soldiers from hard-to-reach places as part of the United States Air Force Pararescue. He’s that kind of guy.

“It hasn’t been easy. Nobody ever said it would be. But it’s been . . . rewarding. It’s been a privilege to meet and work with these people.

“Let me be clear: this isn’t retirement. I don’t think I’d know how to, if I finally got my hands on it.

“This isn’t goodbye, either. This is . . . the beginning of a new era.

“We faced Thanos together. We can face the future together. Come what may.

“Don’t forget to look up. There’s a great big world out there, if you’re willing to find it. And it is my genuine honor to pass this torch on to a man as capable as Sam Wilson.

“Thank you. This isn’t goodbye. This is _see you soon_.”

. o .

They stayed long enough to celebrate with Sam offstage.

The immediate response to Sam Wilson as the new bearer of the Captain America mantle was hopeful. People seemed excited, rather than afraid or fretful. Perhaps it was Ares’ blessing, or maybe his assurance, that soothed their unease. 

They had grown up learning about one man, one heroic icon, wearing the suit. So few had ever met him—fewer still had seen him eye-to-eye. He was a ghost in their midst, a moral with a mission and a face, _maybe_. Even on stage, he wore his war coat, disguising his true form. Ares would not appear underdressed before public eye, no matter how humble he was being.

 _You are the_ god _of_ war, a man had told him once, adjusting fake horns on his cloth head. _Act like it_.

They’d called him other names, actually—our hero, our icon, our _salvation_ —but he’d heard the message, all the same. 

_God of war. God of war_.

Sam did not let down his guard until Steve showed him his own new shield.

It was mostly black, with a ring of eight thin red arrowheads surrounding the center. Splashed in the very center of the shield was a white star—a symbol for the fallen, a target for the bold.

“You made this?” Sam marveled, holding the heavy shield in both hands. It was almost three times the weight of the original; unlike Sam’s, the broken shield was never melted and reformed for new metal. Painstakingly, Vulcan had reformed the lost edges, then coated the entire two-piece shield in multiple layers of gold-titanium and vibranium sheets. And at last, it was complete—as heavy, hard, and war-ready as it would ever be.

“No,” Steve said. _Vulcan did_. “Tony—”

“Should’ve known,” Sam chided himself, gently amused. “That man’s wicked with a hammer.” He passed the shield back. Steve hung it on his arm. Dressed in matching war coat—mostly black, with hints of red and white—he felt every bit the remade Ares. “It suits you, Steve.”

“Thank you.” Steve had seen himself in a mirror, seen the pride in Vulcan’s eyes. _You look like a god_. Tony had to lean up on tiptoe to rest his chin over Steve’s shoulder. The look in his eyes was pure fire: _Amazing. Amazing, amazing, amazing. . . ._

“I’ll try to live up to this,” Sam said, hefting the familiar Stars and Stripes with an irrepressible smile. “Feels damn good, I’ll say that.”

“It was made for you, Sam.” It was made for every-man—and now it was Sam Wilson’s turn.

Sam grinned, nudged his shoulder, then drifted to mingle with the rest of the small, private party, showing off _Captain America’s_ shield.

Steve stood back, very at peace with the decision. A huge weight he hadn’t wanted on his shoulders had finally been lifted. His own shield was perfect; the Frisbee Howard Stark had made for him was so light it tricked him into thinking he was one of the mortal men on the field. Even Hermes could wield it in battle, light and fleet as he was. This, though—this was _his_ weapon.

 _Eight arrows. One for me, one for you_ , he pointed out the twins on either side of the West-East axis. Athena held the North; Hermes held the South. Thor and Asterion were the Northwest and Southeast pair; Themis and Coulson were the final alignment, Northeast and Southwest.

It felt good to hold their allegiance in the curve of his elbow. A rare hint of permanency, in an ever-changing world.

. o .

The first time Ares cleaved a tree in half with the new shield, Vulcan was there to watch.

“We could’ve won the war a lot faster if we’d given you a real gun,” Vulcan mused, examining the stunted wreckage of the pine tree. “That’s horrifying.”

Steve shrugged, recovering his shield. “You asked what I could do.”

. o .

Society lacked places for them, so they ran away from it.

Found a place in the mountains that wasn’t near a population center and left most of their personal affects behind. They sat in the snow by a clear, still pond and talked about the future of Iron Man. Unlike Captain America, the Iron Man story was _inextricably_ tied to the Tony Stark redemption arc; convincing an already rattled public that Tony Stark, fifty-some years old and exhausted, deserved a break was like telling them the sun was tired. At best, they wouldn’t buy it; at worst, they would condemn him for “hanging up the shield.”

Steve didn’t care about the naysayers on his own behalf—Sam had already been one of the leading members behind-the-scenes in the post-Snap recovery environment, and his easygoing nature was quickly winning over skeptics in the public eye—but he knew Tony worried incessantly about his legacy.

Fifteen years of good work against thirty years of reckless endangerment was hardly a recipe for peace.

Tony anguished not because he wanted to retire—he anguished because he wanted to live _freely_ , to _be_ the god of fire and forge he was meant to be. Iron Man was often the song-and-dance, open arms and still poses. _Vulcan_ , though, he was meant to _build_.

It was in his very essence to drive the hammer against the anvil, long past the point of visceral exhaustion. Just as it was Steve’s to fight every battle.

 _I don’t care if I win them all. I care that I was_ there _._

Long before they had made him outstanding, the essence of Ares had rested in his heart.

 _I am the god of war. I allege myself with those who would have peace in our time_.

There was outrage and anguish over Captain America’s “retirement.” Many felt it was the last betrayal of the Steve Rogers that they had dreamed of. What kind of man could retire from being a hero? ( _I’m not retired; I’m lying in wait._ ) 

Tony Stark had spent fifteen years cleaning up his rep; stepping out of the armor and walking away would undo much of the good people saw his servitude as.

“I think you’re lookin’ at this the wrong way,” Ares postulated, lounging bare in ice-cold water because he’d stopped running from his demons a long time again. Vulcan watched from a distance, seated on a rock, one arm draped around his covered knees. “They don’t need to see you every hour. Once a year suffices.”

“They’ll call me a coward.”

“Not if you give them something to look at.”

Tony’s gaze flicked over him pointedly. The water hid his nudity, but his bare chest was visible. “You’ve changed,” Vulcan observed.

“I lived a little,” Ares replied cryptically.

Vulcan rested his chin on his knees. “And you didn’t take me with you?” he jested lukewarmly.

Steve shrugged a shoulder. “If I did, we wouldn’t be here.”

Vulcan sat with that in silence. “What happened to her?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Morgan.”

“She had Pepper,” Steve said. “Rhodey.”

“Rhodey.” Tony exhaled a sigh.

“He’s okay,” Steve said calmly, lifting one foot, examining the almost translucent marble white before letting it slip under the water again. “You’re not the first.”

“I was his best,” Tony bit out.

“You were.”

They were quiet again. The still waters did not speak, but the rest of the forest did, spinning on in quiet motion. “He loved you,” Steve assured him. “He grieved.”

“I know.” Tony was folded up tightly, almost like a child, hugging knees to his chest. “I know he did.”

“You’re not happy?”

Tony barked a laugh. “Would you be?”

Steve pictured Bellerophon, dark eyes, burned soul, telling him to go be happy. He felt that familiar pang of guilt, abandoning them to their own hell. “I feel for them,” Steve said at last, neutral, safe ground. “I know they’ve suffered.”

“You left them. How easy.”

Ares let the barb glance off him. “I was human once, too.”

It was meant to be a joke. It didn’t sound like a joke.

“You say that like you’re not anymore,” Vulcan deadpanned.

Ares smirked before he could stop it. “What man messes with fate half as much as we have?” He twisted to look at Tony, holding his gaze as he said, “We’re not interlopers. This is who we _are_.”

“You’re actually crazy,” Tony said seriously, but there was the spark of hope in his eyes that said: _Tell me more_.

Ares slipped further into the water, then lowered his arms, disappearing under the surface.

 _You’ll regret it. It’s too late to change it. You do realize you’ve already made the step over? This isn’t step zero, there’s no trial and error. You’ve made your bed, now lie in it._ The wizard had looked at him with sneering disapproval. _At least the fate of the universe didn’t rest in_ your _hands_.

A strong arm hooked under his, dragged him out of the water. Tony sputtered, “Don’t _do_ that,” and huffed as he dragged Steve ashore, like _he_ was the one who had almost drowned.

Tony was still shaking as Steve redressed. “We lost you once,” Tony snapped. “Rather not do it again.”

Ares said nothing.

“ _Talk_ to me, dammit.”

“About what?” Steve buttoned up his shirt. “How they all knew I was a fool for wanting to save you?” Tony’s expression twisted, from rage to surprise. “How they knew I was leaving them?” Ares turned to face him directly. “Thor said the essence of the man remains alive, so long as it is somewhere in the universe. _You_ , Tony. I found _you_. And it cost me—” He clenched his fists at his sides. “It cost _them_.”

He started off into the woods again. It did not take long for Vulcan to catch him up to him and catch him by the sleeve, halting him. “We _lost_ ,” Ares snapped, shrugging off his hand. His voice trembled with the force of his anger: “I lost my home world and my family and everything, _everything_.” His hands were shaking where they gripped Vulcan’s shirt. Vulcan held his gaze levelly, unafraid. 

Ares’ anger was the stuff of literal legends. It was almost as at home in his heart as grief. His voice dropped to a whisper so it would not become a shout: “I have traveled so many lifetimes searching for answers, for peace. And in every one of them, there’s more. More anguish, more suffering, _more_ —” He uncurled his fingers from Tony’s shirt so he could not dig into the flesh underneath. He forced himself to take a step away, to put distance between them.

He drew in an expansive breath. Vulcan watched him, absorbing it all, storing it. It angered Ares, that the fire inside him was steel in Vulcan’s forge. “I left my family,” he said, numb, burned out. “So I could find a new one. _I killed him_.” Tony flinched from the lie. “I cut out his place in this universe. And if I hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”

Vulcan sized him up. His gaze flicked briefly over Steve’s shoulder, like he could imagine another Ares there, waiting to exact revenge. It was an endless chain, in some way—just like falling dominoes. “I don’t care,” Vulcan said, stubborn, stout, simple as that.

Ares could fight fire with fire, steel with steel. He could meet anger in its tracks, bleed for his cause. There was nothing he could do with apathy. Nothing whatsoever.

“I don’t care that you’re from the wrong universe,” Vulcan went on, understanding, at last, _we are not mortals anymore_. “Your actions had consequences. _I don’t care_.”

Vulcan stepped closer, but Ares turned away, shoulder to him. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Vulcan would find him again, eventually. “We weren’t destined for ordinary lives,” Vulcan went on. “Ordinary _deaths_.” A warm hand settled on icy skin. “I have you and you have me. What more do you need?”

It was an honest question. Yet Ares could not answer it. He craved not worldly pleasures, food or comfort, art or leisure. He was the god of civil order, and the universe would always be unstable. There was no rest for the wicked.

“Peace,” said the god of war.

. o .

Athena joined them on Mount Olympus.

Perhaps she, too, was bored of society. Maybe she missed them. Steve wasn’t sure, but he answered the door and blinked once at Natasha’s arrival. “Room for one more?”

They made room. There was only one guest room in the lodge—it was small, secluded, high up the trail—but it was enough for their needs. 

She drank and ate with them. She stoked fires alongside them, even broke into their liquor cabinet. Vulcan and Athena got more out of those nights than Ares, but he liked knowing some people could be happy.

Athena made it up to him; she took him on long hunts, from sunup to sundown. Ares had never liked hunting before—he had felt it made him too animalistic, relying on his superhuman attributes—but Athena showed him the joy of it, the patient planning and cunning execution. They wandered far from home, hardly speaking to one another, while Vulcan stayed behind. Ares liked the silence even more than the long talks; all he had to be with her was _Ares_.

She made him feel both more and less like an animal, an outsider. Worldly pursuits didn’t cross the road as often; they were as removed from the people as they could be, and the people didn’t cross their mind half as much as what they could learn from each other. Vulcan was eager to learn, Athena to teach, and Ares simply liked to watch.

“Does it hurt?” Vulcan seemed compelled to ask, as Ares dragged a damp rag over the animal bite marks on his left arm.

“No,” Ares said.

“You’re lucky,” Vulcan went on. “Infection kills.” _Mortals_ , he didn’t add.

Vulcan was as heroic as Athena and Ares, but he stayed close to their little forge, well aware that his damaged heart would not rebound from such long exertions and one bad wound would mean a swift return to the miseries of mortality. 

Vulcan didn’t mind his self-imposed isolation. He seemed to like having the place to himself, shooing them out the door earlier and earlier, a playful kiss on the cheek incorporated into the farewell. Ares didn’t mind; it was _Vulcan_.

They kept odd hours—Ares alone was married to ritual, lying down at the same time, rising an hour before sunrise. As the unspoken arbiter of the house, Ares suspected his own lawful accordance formed a necessary part of Athena and Vulcan’s inevitable breach of conduct. Ares grew the trees for someone else to burn.

He awoke in a decidedly dour mood whenever they pushed things too far, trying to break open peanuts below his range of detection. But when they joined him in his bed, he didn’t cast them aside. He had missed the company, more than most things, long after the Second Great War.

Athena stabilized them, made life _normal_ again. Where Vulcan and Ares danced around mortal matters, Athena rescinded them completely. No one was looking for the Black Widow to make a statement; she was famously a turncoat, as liable to voice loyalty as dissension on screen. In some contexts, it had made her a hero; in others, a traitor. She seemed unbothered by it, only assuring them that Hermes’ family was being looked after—by Wanda.

“Wanda?” Steve repeated incredulously, lounging on his preferred couch, unopened bottle in hand. “What about Wanda?”

“Use it or lose it, pal,” Tony declared, swiping the bottle from his hand.

“She’s fine,” Natasha assured, working on a fur-skin cloak on the floor. “She wanted to stay with them for a while. Help them get settled. She gets along with the kids.”

Tony had taken the mention of Wanda in stride, but he paused audibly at _kids_.

It had been—how many days? A month?

Time didn’t seem to pass like it was supposed to, in the forest. The sun continued to rise and fall, but in a leisurely, open-ended way. _We are free, here_.

But they had ties to the mortal world that couldn’t be shaken. Tony returned after a long moment, open bottle in hand. He looked at the two of them, then sat on the arm of the couch near Ares’ feet. “I’m a shit dad,” he announced.

“Father of the year is still up for grabs,” Athena deflected, both an answer and a consolation, focusing on the skin in front of her.

Tony rubbed his eyes with one hand. They were dry but weary. “You, know, things, stuff,” he said, pointing at Ares, then snapping his fingers, searching for words. “What’s our, what’s the—”

He wasn’t drunk, but he was agitated, pushing at Ares’ feet so he could take his proper seat, a counsel called. Ares merely draped a foot on the floor, his stake on the entire couch made. “What’s our move, here?” Vulcan asked plainly.

Athena kept at her cloak. Ares offered placidly, “She’s your daughter, Tony. What do you—”

Tony drew in a sharp breath, nearly choked on it. Ares nudged his back with his foot, almost dismissive comfort, nonchalant. Tony folded forward a little. “We—can’t—bring her, here,” he managed.

Steve knew that, on some level. It wouldn’t be enough for a growing girl, to live with the wolves and learn how to keep a den. She needed the enrichments that the modern world provided, the exposure to other— _mortals_ —people. She couldn’t live in at the top of the world forever, even if it was actually a very climbable hill.

Besides—it was their sacred space. Bringing others into it would change it. Natasha certainly had. The more, the less pure the original intention. _A space for the gods, to be gods_.

“We can go, Tony,” Steve said, alleging himself even though it hurt, somewhere, to abandon their castle on a hill.

Tony was mute, tipping the bottle for a few gulps, then setting it on the floor. He more or less fell into Ares, who left one arm behind his head but let the other settle around Vulcan’s back. Tony hiccupped once. He was very safe in Ares’ hold; no one crossed swords lightly with Ares, after all.

For a long time, the only sound was Natasha working near the fire. Steve let the cabin creaks and woodsy noises beyond drift over them, the open door bringing in the fresh scent of pine. It was nice to be alone with the world, to be among his people and know, ultimately, he could not stay. It wasn’t frightening to him; it was in his DNA, to fight the fight over the horizon. He did not sleep because he knew he could; he slept because men died from long marches into battle.

 _I must be ready_ , his weary bones demanded as he lied down every night. _Tomorrow could bring death_.

Finally, Vulcan sighed. “Soon,” he announced, vague but committal.

Ares stroked his hip in mute agreement.

. o .

It was summer downstairs.

Everything in full bloom, hot sun high in the sky—a land breathing a sigh of relief as winter finally relented. Of course, it was also winter, somewhere—just as it was winter in the mountains.

They stayed close to the shadows, avoiding the limelight. Food was found, not killed, and rest came far less easily to Ares, who had taken for granted their cabin in the woods.

But Pepper met them at their advised location. Morgan and Happy in tow.

She seemed in good spirits, Steve thought, as they all sat down for a meal. Morgan was overjoyed to see not only her father but “Auntie Nat,” who scooped her up and kissed her on the cheek. It was comforting, how easily Natasha represented the village, raising a single child. She bounced Morgan a little, even though Morgan was big enough that Tony huffed when he finally picked her up, and then let Morgan draw in permanent marker on her nice white jacket, because it needed a little “something more.”

While they played in the sun, Tony and Pepper sat at a picnic table and talked about everything. Happy mediated, bringing the sandwiches—“Oh, geez, hungry already, kid?” as he handed her a pair of wrapped sandwiches with an order to “Go play nice”—before bringing Tony Stark up to speed.

Ares sat nearby, watchful, keeping an eye on everything. He was content to watch, forgotten, so still and quiet he was almost a statue as he leaned an arm back on the table and basked. Eyes closed, he put the others at ease, miming disinterest in the proceedings, a plus-one for everyone.

Then Morgan said, “Sandwich?” and he opened his eyes.

He ruffled her hair and accepted it, telling her, “Thank you.” She flung her arms around his neck in a hug, then bounded off to rejoin Natasha, whose jacket was draped over her knees and covered in five-year-old art.

“You look good,” Happy observed, talking to Tony. “Put some skin on those bones, huh?”

Tony nodded, and Steve thought, _He does look better_. Tony drank more than he was supposed to— _sober_ was a stretch at times, but they kept him in line, and he rarely overindulged, wanting to remain sharp enough to enjoy the games they played—but that was the way of the gods. They ate, they drank. Fire only burned in close quarters.

 _Maybe we’re ripping too much bone with the spear_ , Ares mused, taking a huge bite of his sandwich. _No need to bleed out._

Happy was a good mediator. He either ignored or missed the occasional wince, proceeding in such a casual manner that it kept tension from building. He seemed to genuinely want the best for both Pepper and Tony, who seemed to want to reconnect even if they were wary about it.

Tony hadn’t confided in him terribly much, even under the best of times, but Ares’ eidetic memory recalled moments of doubt, of _It is a crutch, to have ninety suits, isn’t it?_ As far as he was concerned, Vulcan knew his own work better than anyone, and if he wanted to make a thousand suits, that was his prerogative. From the outside, watching him exhaust himself over it had to hurt, but Ares had cut his teeth on more than one well-meaning interloper trying to get him to step back.

He finished his sandwich but didn’t move to join either party, just yet. He was content in the sun, content to stand by, unneeded. It was nice _not_ to be needed, Ares thought. He knew war when he saw it, and this was peace.

. o .

Tracking down Asterion was a lot easier than Steve would have thought. He had expected a grueling year-long odyssey, overturning every rock, interrogating every tail. 

Instead, Tony had said, “Yeah, I have his number.” Dr. Banner had answered on the second ring. He had seemed equal measures relieved and wary. Even though Ares had not made his presence known, he had strongly suspected that Dr. Banner had known.

Steve’s suspicion was confirmed after they flew halfway across the world to meet Dr. Banner at his home in the Australian outback and Dr. Banner greeted him with a grimacing smile. “I had a feeling you’d be here,” he told Ares, offering a somewhat awkward fist-bump in lieu of an even more awkward handshake. “Can’t exactly shake you, can I?”

“Can’t exactly,” Steve echoed. He then let Tony do most of the talking. Dr. Banner visibly relaxed.

“I find it incredibly peaceful here,” Dr. Banner explaining, giving them a house tour. “Took me two years to build, but it’s home.”

It was fairly simple in design—a one-story home, sprawling but simple. Commodious enough that Professor Hulk could wander freely without bumping his head on every ceiling. “So,” he said, setting down on an oversized couch surprisingly neatly, “what’s the job?”

“No job,” Tony said, a little too quickly.

“Sounds like there’s a job,” Dr. Banner pointed out, looking at Steve again for the first time, his easy nature evaporating. “What’s wrong?”

“Can’t a guy pay a visit to his friend every once in a while?” Tony huffed, half-drowning in a chair designed for a monster. “There a kid seat in this house?”

Steve wisely sat on the windowsill, which was wide enough for Hulk fingers to fit around it. It made an effortless vantage point.

Dr. Banner apologized to Tony, “No, sorry. I don’t—get a lot of visitors.” He offered a huge pillow from his own couch, and Tony used both hands to arrange it behind himself, more like a couch than a chair.

“That’s better,” Tony said.

Dr. Banner started, “Is it Thanos?”

Steve nipped that in the bud: “No.”

Dr. Banner still grimaced. “So—S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“No, I think Fury’s still dead,” Tony said, without a shred of dishonesty.

The Minotaur met and held Ares’ gaze. “What do you want from me?”

Ares spread his hands slowly, then clasped them, in a show of nonchalance. “We were friends, once.”

Asterion didn’t blink. _Were we?_

Tony jutted in: “Really cozy. That was a fun week in the Tower. Could’ve made something.” They’d all parted ways after the Battle of New York, but they’d spent time together, in various permutations, in Tony’s shining city-within-a-city. He had been too damn lonely to leave them alone, even if he could have called virtually anyone in the world to warm his bed. He desired nothing so _egregious_ , he had assured them; he had just wanted somebody to talk to, and most people were— _mortal_ —stupid.

“Could’ve been something,” Tony went on, unable to cut the tension between Asterion and Ares, monster and lion-tamer. “Could’ve—”

“Why’d you come here?” Dr. Banner asked Steve, a question that had clearly been lingering on the edge of his consciousness for a while.

Ares said, “Do you not want me here?”

The silence echoed.

“Okay,” Ares said, rolling out his shoulders a little, instinctively braced. “Why?”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Okay,” Ares repeated.

“You should,” Vulcan vouched, serious, for once. “We’re all on the same team, here.”

Asterion didn’t look away.

Ares offered quietly, “I’m not here to take his place.”

“No, that’s just—a coincidence.”

The tension was palpable. Ares pushed himself gently off the windowsill. “You think I killed him.” Ares didn’t like beating around the bush.

“I don’t think you’re a Skrull,” Asterion parried neatly.

Ares nodded, then said, “I did. Kill him, that is.”

The Minotaur stood. Tony watched them, too wounded to intercede. “Guys,” he warned, “let’s not.”

“Why?” Asterion demanded, ignoring Vulcan.

Ares lifted his chin automatically. “I wanted to be happy,” he said. _Don’t I deserve that?_

Asterion’s gaze darkened. Ares could almost see the bull’s steaming breath. “So, you’re a murderer.”

 _I’ve killed more people than you can imagine_. The god of war was not meant to wield the time stone; every war he did not avert became his toll. “Yes,” Ares said, not shying from it.

Tony said, “ _Guys_.”

“Tell me I’m not the only one who doesn’t trust a moral dilemma,” Asterion said quietly.

“You were the first to warn me not to go,” Ares admitted. “Said—there was only one way to find out. By shitting on my family.”

“Didn’t know you had it in you, Brucey,” Tony chimed in, almost chained to his chair. There was nothing he could do but _watch_.

“Sounds about right. You left them?” And for the first time, there was sorrow in Bruce’s voice. Like the mere thought of abandonment by their leader was—unfathomable.

 _I died, here_ , Ares remembered. And his own voice softened, too: “I’m sorry.”

He let the attack happen; saw the charge in slow motion, watched one huge hand reach for him, felt the breathless instant his feet left the ground. The Minotaur pinned him against the wall hard enough to leave a dent in it. Steve did not even flinch. He could not breathe, even if he wanted to. 

Slowly, the giant’s killing hand gentled, easing up on his chest.

“What did you see?” Dr. Banner asked, almost scientific, emotion bleached from his tone.

Ares swallowed a breath against giant’s hands. “Everything,” he replied.

Slowly, slowly, The Minotaur set him down on his feet. “I’m sorry,” Asterion said, almost for everything.

Ares nodded, suddenly exhausted. “It’s okay,” he said again.

. o .

Dr. Banner apologized with tea. 

Steve said to him, “Thor told me the universe—” He paused for a sip, throat dry. “He said there’s a—kind of resonance.”

“Coherence,” Dr. Banner said, in a strange, strange voice.

“I guess so.” Steve gulped another swallow. “The spark of a person carries,” he went on, one hand on his mug, the other waving encompassingly. “So—you’ll see me in him. I see you, Doctor. And I know I hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me,” Dr. Banner dismissed quietly, but Steve knew that wasn’t true. His left arm shook whenever he reached with it.

 _It’s like—fire and cold_.

“If I could—snap my fingers and make it all come together, I would,” Steve promised. “If I could undo everything, make it all right—”

“You wouldn’t,” Tony finished, quiet but severe. “Time marches on.”

Steve thought about what it would be like, to undo it all, to remake the universe. For an instant, he was horrified, at Thanos’ true vision, actualized. “No,” he agreed, “I wouldn’t.”

“Time marches on,” Dr. Banner toasted with his mug.

They raised their own glasses in response.

. o .

“You three made it in one piece,” Natasha greeted, days later, giving them space, in the event of the unthinkable.

Steve was grateful; he did not want to know how Natasha would have reacted to Professor Hulk lashing out at him, however deserved. _I hurt you all. I own this hurt_.

“Nat,” Dr. Banner said warmly, holding both arms out widely. “God, how long has it—”

“A long time, big fella,” Natasha said, looking at Tony and Steve pointedly as they sat out on the porch. “You two look like scolded kids.”

“Kicked outta the kitchen for crimes against humanity,” Tony said cheerfully.

“I’m just here to make sure he doesn’t wander off,” Steve added, pointing at Tony, who pouted.

“Excuse you, I am _very_ responsible—”

Steve tuned it all out, for a bit, basking in the oven under the shade of the porch as Nat and Bruce fist-bumped, Tony pushing himself to his feet so he could give her a proper hug.

It hurt when Dr. Banner looked beside Natasha, asking, “Where’s—” before cutting himself off with a pained half-smile.

“Thor’s in New Asgard,” Natasha deflected coolly, easing over the real question. _Hermes? Where’s Hermes?_

“Gang’s all back together, then,” Dr. Banner said, casting a pointed look at Steve, who remained on the porch. “Never thought you’d see it again, huh?”

“Not something you see every day,” Steve allowed.

. o .

“Whoever thought The Minotaur could cook, huh?” Tony mused, out of Dr. Banner’s earshot, ignoring or missing Ares’ smirk. “Not that I’m married to the idea, I could be—”

“No,” Steve interjected. “You’re right.”

Tony nodded, slurped more off his bowl, and said, “Fucking knew it,” with a satisfied air. “This the new world order? Or is crazy contagious?”

Ares didn’t answer, sitting out on the porch with him and enjoying the quiet night.

. o .

“We would’ve invited you!” Tony defended, hiding behind Steve to avoid a hug from Thor. “We would’ve, but you were—”

“Too busy reveling?” Thor asked with a suggestive twinkle to his eye, releasing Natasha.

Tony gripped the back of Steve’s shirt tightly. “I do not want a hug,” Vulcan stated clearly.

Ares rolled his eyes, then asked Thor, “How’s New Asgard?”

“It’s—eh—” Thor made a so-so gesture with a hand. “Small but sufficient.”

“Sounds like you, Stark,” Natasha said.

Tony released Steve’s shirt to retaliate, and Thor swooped in. “No!” Tony howled.

Dr. Banner came to the front door, then about-faced, not quite quickly enough. “Banner!” Thor roared jubilantly, hightailing after him. “You came!”

“I _live_ here!” Dr. Banner said, from the depths of his home.

Slightly hunched, Tony wheezed, “Subtract three years from my life, please.”

Steve patted him on the back comfortingly. “Only four more,” he assured. Tony groaned and planted his forehead against Steve’s sternum. “Ow,” he said.

“Can’t do it. Cannot do it.”

“I thought you wanted to be his favorite,” Steve mused, making no move to hold him up or shoo him.

“I now know why Loki is evil,” Tony replied, startling a little laugh out of Steve. “ _Shut up_.”

. o .

“The Original Avengers, back together again!” Thor expounded. “Who would have thought, eh?”

“Not like this,” Natasha admitted, roasting a marshmallow over the fire.

“I feel a weight off my chest such as I have never known,” Thor went on, jubilant enough for the lot of them. “Knowing that you are here, and Thanos is dead!” He pointed at Ares with his speared marshmallow, expression alight with real joy.

Ares almost cowered before it, but he couldn’t go very far with Vulcan curled up on his lap, in case of scorpions. “Right,” Steve offered, a touch lamely. “The king is dead.”

“Say his name!” Thor encouraged zealously.

 _Say it three times in front of a mirror, he’ll appear_.

Ares grimaced.

“I think we’re good,” Dr. Banner interjected, holding a bouquet of toasting marshmallows delicately. “Right? We don’t need to say it.”

“Thanos,” Tony said at once, scooping up his flaming marshmallow and extinguishing it. “Thanos.”

“Stop it,” Steve told him.

“Thanos,” Tony repeated stubbornly, taking a bite.

They waited. The fire crackled harmlessly.

“Fuck Thanos,” Tony declared, spearing another marshmallow. “You should eat that,” he added to Steve, just before his marshmallow fell into the pit. “Whoops.”

Steve sighed, speared a new marshmallow, and asked, “Haven’t we tempted fate enough?”

“No,” Tony said calmly.

. o .

“I mean not to disrupt your rest, but I have found a treasure,” Thor said, lifting cupped hands to reveal a cranky tarantula curled up inside them. “Is this edible?”

Ares glowered at him, more peeved at a broken sleep cycle—it had been a _damn_ good dream, never mind what it was about—than the animal. “Thor,” he said at last, voice very grave and very deep, “get that thing out of this house, or _so help me_.”

Thor, thankfully, retreated. Steve stuffed a pillow over his head futilely.

When Tony asked Steve at breakfast why the long face, Steve gave him such a glowering look Tony opted to have his morning coffee with Dr. Banner instead.

. o .

“You look tan.”

“I look sunburned,” Steve corrected from the other side of the computer screen.

“I was trying to be nice,” Sam chided, but he was smiling too much to be sincere about it. “How are you?”

“Should be asking you.”

“Humor me.”

“I’m—” Ares thought about it. “Adjusting.”

“You could say that again,” Horus said, indicating his uniform. Ares liked it—there was more white, less blue. “Hope nobody expects me to do a backflip in this thing. I think they might’ve taken a little too much off the waist.”

“Welcome to the wonderful world of Spandex,” Steve said dryly.

Sam laughed. “So, that’s the real reason you gave it up, huh?”

“I didn’t give it up,” Steve protested. “I just—”

“Ran away with Tony Stark,” Sam finished, nodding. He shook his head when Steve made a face at him. “Don’t give me that look. Everybody knows.”

 _Wonderful_. “Nobody _cares_ ,” Sam went on. “I mean, some people—but they’re always gonna care too much.”

“He’s married, Sam,” Steve reminded, very flatly.

“All right, romantic bro-trip.” Sam grinned at himself. “C’mon, that was clever. You know, _road trip_ , but—”

Sighing, Steve said, “Still taking the piss outta me after all these years, huh?”

“Didn’t ask about your kink, but I’m flattered you’d share it.”

“Goodnight, Sam.”

“Good _morning_ , Captain America.”

“Been dying to say that one, haven’t you?”

“And it felt so good,” Sam beamed.

. o .

“For ten years, we were closer than blood,” Tony mused. “We were the Avengers. That means something.”

“It does.”

“It _meant_ something,” Tony self-corrected.

Steve looked at him across the table. It was a rare morning to themselves—Natasha and Thor were out on a walk and Dr. Banner was asleep on the other side of the house. 

Across universes, they had had this conversation a dozen ways—and Ares never liked it. “Don’t make me choose,” Ares pleaded quietly, trying to head it off. “I can’t.”

Tony’s expression twisted. Vulcan couldn’t let it go: “No, I know. He’s your buddy. Your Bucky.” He sipped his coffee. He could not know who he sounded like, was nothing like Rumlow, at the core. Nor the well-meaning people who had told Bucky, once upon a time, to get rid of the scrawny hanger-oner. 

_He’s not convenient to love. But that’s not what love’s about. Sometimes, the hardest thing in the world is loving something you can’t have_.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Tony asked bluntly.

Steve tried to hold his gaze. He couldn’t. _Because I couldn’t lose him. Because you would’ve did what you did, and you would’ve had just cause to do it_.

“Because I’m selfish,” he said honestly.

Tony seemed surprised by the answer. Ares stared at the wall. “And I wanted to keep you both,” he went on plainly, the answer not rehearsed but familiar. “He’s—in a lot of ways, he’s all I’ve got, Tony.”

“And he’s a monster.”

Steve bit back the immediate retort. Inhaled.

_He’s my friend._

_So was I_.

“He went through hell,” Steve corrected quietly. “And that makes monsters out of good men. But he’s _still_ —” He struggled to keep everything but the barest, calmest emotion in his voice: “He’s still my guy. Like hell I won’t defend him.” Swallowing, he added, “I’m not saying it was right. I’m not saying it was his fault—that it happened the way it did. He told me. To tell you. Said it was your right. It was. I said no.”

He let those three words linger. So many times, Ares had been called to make the judgment call. From day one, in the field: _Call it, Cap_.

And still, people were shocked when it led to _war_.

“I knew it was wrong,” he went on, because Tony was listening, and he had to speak the truth into existence or be a— _zero, zip, nada, zilch,_ _no trust_ — _liar_ for the rest of his existence. “I knew it was going to be a problem. Ugly truths never stay under the rug for very long. And I knew—when it did. That was it.” He looked at his coffee, then Tony’s face. He wished he hadn’t. The careful blankness was painful. He looked down at his mug again, a coward’s way out of seeing his face: “I wish I’d never seen the tape, Tony. I wish I never knew. But I learned the truth, and I chose not to share it. And I thought. . . .”

“You thought I wouldn’t want to know.”

Steve nodded once, mutely.

Tony sat across from him, utterly silent. Steve didn’t dare move. _I don’t want to run, Tony. I don’t want to keep trying. I know you hate me. I know what I did was_ -

“Okay.”

Steve spoke to the coffee: “It’s not okay, Tony.”

“I just wanted to know,” Tony said neutrally. “Can’t a guy move on?”

Steve forced himself to look up. “How?”

Tony looked pained. “I’m not your absolution,” he said, “time is.” He reached out and, though visibly hesitant, Vulcan curled his hand around Ares’ wrist. “I’ve given enough time to other monsters. I know you’re sorry. You might be the only one that ever was.”

“I am sorry, Tony,” Steve said numbly, staring at his calloused hand. “You didn’t deserve it.”

“Impossible situation.”

“I had a choice.”

“And you made it. Still impossible.” Tony squeezed his wrist tightly. His knuckles turned white. “We’re both fucked up. I don’t want to lose you, twice.”

Ares turned over his hand, gripped Vulcan’s wrist briefly. “You won’t.”

Tony exhaled. It felt like relief.

. o .

It actually brought them closer, having it out there. They clung to each other without pretense.

Ares was used to keeping an eye on things—sometimes, he thought it was his sole purpose, to be a watchdog while others slept, to be a mediator while others spoke, to sit in patient silence while others grieved. Ares was a destructive force, capable of shattering nature and ripping apart those that defied him; he was also withdrawn, preferring not to show his hand to every stranger.

Vulcan was the opposite—he liked to show his art and have his opinion out there, visible. He liked to be in the spotlight, even if he tortured himself in private over every misstep, every visible wound.

Vulcan built weapons that Ares preferred not to use. Ares built wars that Vulcan raged against.

They both craved peace. Whatever it took.

. o .

“They’ll be okay,” Tony said firmly, exhausted from the flight but happy to be back in the States, walking along the private runway. “Really, I think some sunshine will do the big guy some good.”

“Which one?” Steve asked.

“Both?” Tony squinted against the rising sun. “I meant Thor, but—yeah, both.” Sighing, he added, “What day is it? Changed my mind. I don’t wanna know. Please be Friday.”

“Is that why you named—”

“Shut up,” Tony grumbled, not looking at him as he unlocked his car. “Everyone has a favorite.”

“I don’t have a favorite,” Steve said honestly.

“Yes, you do,” Tony protested. “Monday. You are the only person alive who likes Monday.”

Steve slipped their bags into the trunk. “Doesn’t mean it’s my _favorite_.”

“I will drive off without you,” Tony warned, revving the engine a little. “Try me.”

“I have nothing _against_ Monday,” Steve went on, smirking when Tony did, in fact, jerk the car back a few inches. “Cute.”

“I’m not kidding. Get in or I’m kidnapping you.”

Steve opened the door. They squealed out of the underground parking lot moments later. “What, we tryin’ to rob a bank or something?” Steve asked.

“Not talking to you,” Tony muttered, dark sunglasses firmly in place. “Bed.”

Steve volunteered, “I could _drive_ , Tony,” but Tony just flattened his foot further to the floor.

In record-breaking time, they peeled into one of Tony’s many homes. “Some people rent hotels; I buy cottages,” Tony justified. “They make great gifts,” he dismissed Steve’s amused look.

. o .

Upstate New York smelled better than the city, Steve had to admit. It was also a short drive—a mere four hours—to the city, a far cry from the multi-day sojourn in the outback.

Barefoot, Steve sat on the back porch and read the morning paper on his computer. He wondered how people would react if they knew how close Tony Stark actually was to the city, after months on and off the radar. The usually camera-friendly Vulcan had been unusually quiet after the final battle with Thanos, and every theory from life-model decoy to a stroke had been brought forward to explain his unpredictable appearances.

Steve heard a rustling sound nearby, flicking his gaze up to see a deer nosing around the tree line. He shut his laptop and watched, amused, as it inched closer. To his surprise, it came right up to him, only hesitating one step before closing the gap. “Hey, sweetheart,” he murmured, brushing a gentle hand across her head. “What’re you doing here? Hm?”

She sniffed around him hopefully, then bounded off into the woods. “So long,” he said, shaking his head to himself, chest oddly light.

“You do that often?” Tony asked him, nearly making him drop his laptop.

Steve turned to look at him. Leaning against the doorframe, Tony nodded at the woods. “Deer whisperer.”

“First time for everything,” Steve corrected.

“Hm.” Tony looked around, then said, “You ever think it would be like this? Just—quiet?”

 _No_. In nearly every future Steve had seen, it was loud—grief, anger, strife. _Battle din, violence_. Wherever Ares went, it seemed, misery followed. And yet, Vulcan was right. It was perfectly quiet—not perfectly still, not perfectly silent, just _quiet_.

“No,” he said at last, “no, I didn’t.”

Tony dropped a hand to his shoulder and squeezed it. “Built like _bowling_ balls,” he mumbled, apparently unable to help himself, and Steve sighed around a _Tony_ but Tony was already apologizing, “I’m not ruining the moment, I’m enhancing it.”

Steve sighed. “Sure, Tony.”

. o .

“So, you’re—”

“Taking time off.”

“Right.”

Tony fidgeted. Ares resisted the urge to move in front of the screen, standing by the stairs, watching.

“Well.” He could hear the smile in Pepper’s voice. “If anyone deserves retirement, Tony—”

“I’m not retiring.” Tony looked anywhere but at the screen as he said it, settling on biting at a hangnail. “I’m, uh. I’m taking time. For me. My projects. Feel like. . . .” He mumbled something obscure.

Pepper said, “And your daughter?”

“S’why I called.” Tony spoke around the nail. “Uh.” Setting his hand down, he blew out a slow breath. “How is, can I see her?”

A long moment passed. Then: “Hi, Daddy!”

“Hey, pumpkin. What’s that you got?”

“New lunchbox! It’s got you, see?”

“Oh, wow.” Steve wanted so badly to step around, to put a comforting hand on Tony’s shoulder. The emotion clogging his throat was hard to listen to. “Wow, that’s so good, honey.”

“See, it’s got the Mark V,” Morgan introduced proudly. “Just like me!”

“Just like— _you_. God, you’re so big, kiddo.”

“AND!” There was a mad dash on the other side of the line. Tony took the pause to draw in a short breath. “I got a _balloon!_ ”

Tony laughed, a rich, warm sound. “Aw.”

“It’s red, Daddy! Just like you!”

Steve wanted to be with Tony for a different reason, then: _Let me see, I want to see_. “That’s so nice.”

“When’re you coming home, Daddy? We’re making pizza.”

“Oooh, that sounds fun.” Tony aborted a move to fuss with his nail, offering, “Uh, soon, kiddo, real soon.”

“Good! Tonight?”

“Uh, not that soon.”

Steve could practically see Morgan’s pout. It was just like her Daddy’s—not that he’d say as much. “That’s not _that_ soon.”

“It’s—fairly soon,” Tony said. “Um. I’ll talk to Mommy about it, okay?”

“Okay!”

A long moment passed. Then a door snapped shut in the background. “I’m ready to be a full-time Dad again,” Tony said at once.

Pepper sighed audibly. “I know.” There was a thoughtful length of silence. Steve watched Tony’s expression as he made to speak, twice, before deferring to the hangnail.

Finally, Tony said, “My Dad wasn’t around.”

“I know, Tony.”

“It’s just—I can’t have her in the shop, it’s dangerous.”

“I know, Tony.”

With real despair, Tony said, “I know she’s safe when she’s with you. But—”

“But?” Pepper pressed.

Tony shook his head.

“It’s been an extraordinarily difficult year,” Pepper said diplomatically. “Between the Snap, the post-Snap—”

“The Thanos, the post-Thanos.” Tony nodded along.

“We’ve been making some big adjustments. The Avengers.”

“The Avengers,” Tony mumbled.

“Is it just you?”

Tony winced before he could stop it. “Kind of?”

“I know they’re like family, Tony. You deserve family.”

Tony’s expression was—complicated. _Aggrieved_. “It’s good again, Pep,” he said painfully. “It’s like—”

“Nothing bad ever happened?”

“Exactly.”

Pepper sighed. “Bad things _do_ happen, Tony.”

“I know.”

“And you have to ask—”

“I know.”

There was another, briefer pause. “Are you coming home?” Pepper asked.

Tony said, “I want to.”

“But _are_ you?” Pepper pressed gently.

Tony covered his face with one hand briefly. “People target me,” he mumbled, like he didn’t want to admit it at all but didn’t want to let her assume anything. “They come after me, they blow up my house, they make ransoms—”

“You think she’d be in danger.”

“Yes.”

Pepper sighed.

“I’m not wrong,” Tony bit out, channeling nerves into anger. “I’m not, it happened—”

“I know, Tony.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. We’ve talked about this.”

Steve—didn’t want to be there. He shouldn’t be listening to this, it was private, it was _theirs_ , and then, by cosmic misfortune:

“How’s Steve?”

“Steve? What Steve?” Tony babbled.

“We haven’t—had a chance to catch up,” Pepper said quietly.

She was one of the only people in the wake of the funeral that Steve hadn’t had a chance to talk to.

“He’s good. You know. You’ve seen him.”

“Briefly.”

“He’s not— _bad_ , if that’s what you’re asking.” Tony said it _almost_ like a question. Ares wanted to interject that if anything, he tried to be a positive influence on Tony, turning off lights after a certain hour, generally enforcing a spirit of _take care and take heart_. “He’s just—around.”

“I know you two had a falling out—”

“I know.”

“How’re you?”

“ _Me?_ I’m—great. You know. Can’t say the bruises are all gone, but it’s been, what, two months since the world almost ended? That shh-stuff lingers.”

“We were very lucky, Tony.”

“Yes. We were. How’re _you_? Tell me how the illustrious Pepper is getting by these days.”

Pepper did, talking about how Happy was helping with Morgan while she worked with Stark Industries. Colonel Rhodes, she mentioned, was assisting with post-Restoration bureaucratic snafus, like informing Snapped persons that their jobs had evaporated or incorporating new dynamics, in both military and civilian matters. “It’s been busy,” Pepper said, lightly, not accusingly, but Steve saw the way guilt swept over Tony’s expression as he nodded in conversational agreement.

_What’ve you been up to?_

_Oh, fucking off in the woods, without the fucking_.

Ares was the god of civil order, but he was not the ruler of men; he was there to guide, to inform, not to _push_. He was a symbol more than an active agent; he only interceded on very case-by-case events. Set was of the old order; he ascended the military ranks through grit and commitment, and he reaped the quiet rewards of his rank and assumed its many burdens. Set was admirable; Ares was—ambiguous.

_Why won’t you help them?_

Ares walked away, tuning out the conversation. It didn’t last much longer, anyway.

Tony sighed heavily as he flopped onto the bed next to Steve. “Am I a waste of space?” he asked the ceiling.

“No,” Steve said, one arm behind his head, the other flat on his own stomach.

“Be honest,” Tony persisted. “Am I—”

“No,” Steve insisted.

Tony gulped down a breath. “I gave up Iron Man.”

“You did.”

“Said I wanted out. I did.”

Steve listened. Tony needed to speak, so he let him.

“It was killing me. The palladium, the terrorists—all of it. I wasn’t young when they put a _box_ in me, and I’m not young now.” He patted the space over the former arc reactor. “No one knows how I survived. I don’t think I was supposed to. I don’t even think it’s _possible_.” He laughed a little.

Steve slid his arm off his stomach in silent invitation. Tony took it, shuffling over, curling up next to him, head on his chest. “And I get this feeling—I was _made_ for something. And when I’m doing it, I feel—like I’m unstoppable. I’m never gonna die in that lab. I’m _invincible_ in the suit. But I can’t put a suit around everyone.” _They’re all gonna die_ , he didn’t need to say.

Steve stayed quiet, listening to Tony’s quick breath. “And Pepper, she’s—she’s seen the worst of me, she knows—she _knows_ what—but Morgan hasn’t. There’s been times,” and it was clearly difficult for Tony to say, yet Steve didn’t try to stop him, cut him loose, holding his tongue so Tony could add, “Where, I saw a _picture_. Right? And I just, I thought, _I am the biggest coward on Earth_. Because I knew there had to be a way, had to be—if messing with _time_ is possible, there had to be a way to undo what had been done. But if we _did it_ , I’d lose her. I can’t lose her.”

Steve curled his arm loosely around Tony’s back. It was sore—the fracture had healed, over time, but the wounded ache of it still arose when he bent it a certain way. Thanos had not gone without a fight. His good arm cradled his own head. “So, that’s me. Putting it to bed, because it’s permanent, the unthinkable, where three-and-a-half billion people _die_ and the rest are left to—pick up the pieces. And that’s the story everywhere, that’s—the scale of suffering, it’s beyond what we’re equipped to think about, so we think, okay, three-and-a-half billion strangers for one perfect little girl.” He laughed hysterically.

Again, Steve said nothing. He just ran his hand idly up and down Tony’s back, ignoring the way his elbow twinged with each stroke.

Finally—just when Steve thought Tony would start hyperventilating properly—Tony went quiet. “I prepared for the worst,” he mumbled. “I got the best. Why the hell am I here?”

_Sometimes, everything we ever wanted, isn’t what we get. And when it is. . . ._

_(She had fit so beautifully in his arms. Like a dream, but—_ real _._

_He had knocked on the door expecting every question. She had just whispered, “Steven?” like he had been gone for ten hours, instead of ten years._

_He had been sad to see that she had moved on—like he would have wanted, like he had never needed to tell her, because she had never been_ his _._

_Ares had never had a wife. But he had wanted one._

_She had always been his first love, his only love. That first meeting in [so many years] had been pure joyfulness._

_It was then he knew that she was like_ him _. She was Aphrodite, love itself. Yet she could never be his. She already had another._

 _But she accepted Ares’ dance. And for a very short while, he let himself imagine what could have been_.)

Steve waited until Tony’s babble ran out. Then he simply lied with him for a while, dreaming wide awake.

. o .

There were good gods. 

Apollo, the sun hero; Poseidon, of the oceans.

Even Dionysus won more acclaim, widely revered as one of the most wonderful gods ever created.

But Ares was an accident, a poison in the well that even tempered Athena could not cure. He was a god so at-the-core evil that even the most desperate mortals failed to invoke him, unwilling to bring his spirit to fight alongside them, lest he turn on them. Ares was too dangerous for the world, a god whose death was considered a dream, not a tragedy.

Ares was invoked to end all wars, but Ares’ name became the invocation. 

Ares became the _war,_ and the gods and mortals turned on him.

. o .

Looking in the mirror, Ares thumbed his own beard mildly, expression flat. He did not smile often, but neither did Athena. She made many of his more callous traits feel normal. He _was_ normal—for a time-traveling functionally immortal super-human with the capacity to rewrite reality.

_Where is your sword, Ares?_

Chronos would take care of it, the power stone, the soul stone, all of them. He had no doubt of that. As long as he had his shield and the others, he would be all right without them.

_I don’t need a sword. The war is over._

“The king is dead,” he told the mirror.

He could have sworn an Ares appeared over his shoulder, between one blink and the next. But when he turned, there was no one.

Unsettled, he washed his face with cold water. It steadied him. It reminded him he was alive.

“You’re up early,” Vulcan muttered, sidling up to him, both arms around his waist, a kiss pressed to his bare shoulder with half-open eyes. “Bowling balls,” Tony muttered again, then let go and wandered back off.

Steve resumed brushing his teeth, trying unsuccessfully to categorize the incident as perfectly normal, accidental.

Tony certainly didn’t want to talk about it, giving him a very baleful look that said, _Coffee, please_ , louder than snapped fingers or a verbal explanation.

Steve deliberately took his time, dragging it out, half-tempting fate. 

_God of evil_.

He gratefully slid a cup in front of Tony, who scrunched up his nose at it and drank it with such a grimace Steve would have thought it was made of broken glass if he didn’t make it himself. “Aussies do it better,” he declared. “I just need a pure shot of caffeine every morning. Should’ve put it in here,” he said, tapping his chest. “Now that’s a wake-up call.”

Taking his cue, Steve let the incident slide.

. o .

It kept happening.

Whether Tony was simply too lonely to resist or Steve was too immoral to lock him out, they collided. A touch to the hip that lingered a little too long, a relieved sigh as he flopped into the space next to Steve, a pitiful look and unabashed request for a backrub, like he cared if there was a million-dollar prize attached to it (he refused to accept it, anyway, rolling his eyes over the idea)—it happened, over and over. Once touched, it was like Tony couldn’t stop himself from pushing the boundaries, seeing what he could get away with. But it didn’t feel nefarious. It felt _lonely_.

Steve caught himself thinking, _Go home to your wife_ , as he lounged in the grass sketching the does near the tree line while Tony pouted at him from the kitchen window, refusing to sully himself on _grass_.

The terrible thing was, Ares didn’t mind his company. Did nothing whatsoever to discourage it, never once turned Vulcan down. He lied to himself that it was normal, that people were more touchy-feely in the twenty-first century than they used to be. All the while, he refused to be the wedge that drove a happily married couple apart. He felt physically ill thinking about being the reason a daughter didn’t have her _parents_.

“You have to go back,” he told Tony, point-blank, one dewy morning, stroking the doe’s head. _I can’t be a home for you. You have a wife and daughter_.

Tony was silent behind him. For a moment, Steve thought Vulcan would tell him to go to hell. Then he said, “If I don’t want to?”

Steve sighed. The doe bounded off.

“Then you know what you have to do, Tony. I won’t do this—”

Tony waited. And waited.

“Like this,” Steve finished.

It was crazy to talk like it, even, like it was even a possibility. He was Ares; he was married to blood and death and thunderous silence. He had no room for real love. Real love had moved on a long, long time ago.

Tony just said, “Okay,” and Steve knew it was the beginning of the end. He knew it was a decision he could not stop, any more than the sun rising again.

. o .

_What the hell makes me so special?_

Steve wanted to run. To physically prevent the unthinkable from happening.

 _You stole his life so you could steal his love, and even that you could not take because it was never yours_.

In Greek mythology, Ares killed the man who raped his daughter, and Poseidon declared war on behalf of his dead son. The gods put Ares on trial. The gods declared Ares irredeemable. Any he begat must be evil, as well.

Ares was evil, and yet, from that evil, came a good father.

And now, Steve Rogers was the impetus for new evil: cleaving a family in half, unable to exist peacefully in any universe.

 _I just wanted to be happy_.

Stupid, stupid, idiot wish.

. o .

Ares had always wanted a family.

“One day, you’ll grow up, and you’ll have a lamb of your own, and you’ll know why it’s worth all the hassle,” his Mam told him, in a fuzzy, young memory from the time before perfect clarity.

“I don’t want t’ raise sheep, Mam,” Steve had replied, sitting on the counter looking at her questioningly.

She had laughed. It had been a lovely little memory.

He might not have wanted a flock, but he had gotten one, and looked after it assiduously as Captain America.

Babies still petrified him, froze him in his tracks, but he did not mind the children who ran up to him without fear, confessing their heart’s desires. Each time he listened to them, he yearned quietly for his own little spark of happiness. Babies frightened him, but kids—kids held so much _light_.

On stage, he had always looked for them in the audience, amid the clapping and cheering adults. 

_Don’t forget to look up._

Overseas, he had met a surprising number of kids—refugees, essentially, from shattered towns and broken cities. Little hands had reached out and caught his own gloved one in passing, and he had crouched on one knee in the rubble and told them in their mother’s tongue that everything was going to be _okay_. 

He had learned how to say a few comforting phrases from every language he could fit in his head, offering the same condolences to adult soldiers, who had looked at him with gratitude and awe. Everyone wanted to hear, once in their life, those words from the heart: _Everything’s going to be okay_.

He relished his role as a comfort giver almost as much as a symbol of hope and ongoing rebellion against the forces of evil. For him, they were intertwined: there was no point in winning the war if there was no one left to enjoy the land they reclaimed.

And part of that—was families. Sometimes, all that was left of happy ghost families were shattered kids, scared and alone in a great big world. He had discouraged the artists from painting him with them, afraid it would look contrived, but a photographer had captured him holding a little girl’s hand in his own as they walked down the streets, another time holding a small boy on his shoulder. In the images, his face was either partially or fully obscured, the blur of film unforgiving, and yet the spirit of the photograph was there.

 _The god of war walks among us_.

He hadn’t minded those particular photographs. In those dark times, his uniform had been a true beacon of light, and he had carried it into the darkest places he could find, alleviating as much suffering as possible.

It was never enough, but it was something, and that something mattered an awful lot to the adults who wrote him, telling fond stories of their childhood encounters with the legend.

Ares wondered if they would write him letters so fondly if they knew his true name. Quietly, he tacked up their crayon drawings on his refrigerator, longing for laughter to fill his halls.

As though immune to rebuke, Morgan Stark took his big palm in her tiny hand and guided him around the Stark house. It was a lighthouse, remodeled to suit a family; and while it was far from the commanding Stark manor or the functional Stark Tower, it was a quiet sort of space, full of light from every corner. It was like something out of a storybook, and Steve genuinely marveled at every twist and turn in it as Morgan tugged him along.

Then Morgan told him to wait before she began rooting through a chest full of toys. As he stood in the doorway, looking around the children’s playroom, the ache in his chest grew tenfold. Holding still and silent, he wanted to drop to his knees and scream in anguish, for he would never, ever, ever have this. 

It didn’t matter how many lifetimes he altered chasing his own joy. This easy love, this happy place, would never belong to him. He would always be a stranger passing through, with no real home to call his own, only a name to borrow before he gave that away, as well. Even these people would learn to move on without him if he left, tracking down the wizard and his sword and vanishing from the face of the Earth, forever.

This moment in time was beyond fleeting—it was impossibly rare, a _stolen_ joy he had no right to. His doppelganger was dead in the ground; he had never experienced this, and tears tracked down his face before he gave them any right to exist. He turned and vanished down the staircase before Morgan’s inquisitive call could reach him.

He thundered downstairs and burst out the front door, staggering down a short trail leading to a rocky beach. From behind him, he heard Happy call out, alarmed, before hurrying inside, door slamming after him. Steve ignored him, one hand twisting in his hair as he desperately suppressed each wracking sob, crashing to his knees in the sand and heaving with it.

For a few moments, he was timeless, weeping for what was gone, what never was, what never would be. Then Tony beckoned, “Hey, hey,” and tugged him in for a hug, and it was awful, that Tony, of all people, was the only one left to comfort him, that _Tony_ even would comfort him, after all he had done, yet he could not turn it aside. He would drown in his grief either way, but it was easier to fold into him than to rip himself away.

“Shh,” Tony said, almost conversationally. “Shh, shh, it’s okay.” He spoke so normally about it, like he wasn’t ruining his own life for a ghost, like Steve was _real_ , and not merely a fortunate interloper, and—

_Weren’t you always?_

He tried so damn hard to stop and could not stop _crying_. He at least kept it quiet—the _shh_ part of Tony’s remarks, some biological _need_ not to upset the young one in earshot overriding his need to wail like an animal—and finally stomped out the fire completely, drawing in a nasally breath and sighing it out his mouth. “There,” Tony said, again almost primly, digging in his pocket and producing a packet of tissues. He offered one, and Steve numbly leaned away from him and dabbed at his snotty, teary, disgusting face. “See, sometimes you just need to get it out.” Steve accepted another tissue to wipe his mouth, tempted to shove his head into the sand so he didn’t have to face the day anymore, never mind _Tony_. “It’s all right,” Tony said, giving him another little tissue, how many little tissues equaled one good handkerchief?

Steve blew his nose, hiccupped once, and then managed in only a slightly wobbly tone, “You’re impossible.”

“Thank you,” Tony said, almost blandly but with a twinkle of sincerity, straightening a little like he was preening. Kneeling in the sand in a suit that cost more than Steve would have made in his entire lifetime, back home. He chuckled a little, helpless and overwhelmed with all the feelings bunched in inside him, hating them all and yet needing them to function, to be _human_. Turning them off was an option—and it was precisely what led to a person like Thanos.

 _He killed his daughter_.

Shuddering, Steve said, “I’m sorry.”

Tony shrugged a little, then said buoyantly, “Don’t be.”

“I don’t want you to leave her,” Steve wobbled, refusing to cry and refusing to be a coward who could not voice the hard things.

“Well.” Tony passed him another tiny tissue. Steve dabbed his eyes again. “That’s not your choice, now, is it?”

“Please.”

Tony did flinch at that, tone sobering as he added softly, “Steve.” Again, when Steve’s breath hitched: “ _Steve_. Stop it. You cry again, I’ll throw sand in your face.” Steve chuckled despite himself because Tony was absolutely, sincerely, one of the worst people to cry in front of, and yet he carried tiny tissues with him. _Constant vigilance,_ he liked to say, which Steve felt was a rather strange way of saying, _Be prepared_.

Nodding to assure he wouldn’t—he couldn’t believe he had in the first place, except he hadn’t thought about those photos since the war, and even thinking about them _again_ made his chest tighten, and Tony—well, he didn’t slap him, but he definitely tapped him firmly on the cheek, saying, “Stop it. Steve. I’m serious, I’ll—”

“No, I just.” Steve struggled to bottle up the emotion so he could hand it over, then shook his head helplessly. “I was thinking. Of the pictures.”

Tony shifted so he could sit on his rump, apparently giving up on any semblance of saving his suit. Steve understood; crouching was hard, before the serum made everything easy.

“Okay,” Tony said, perfectly neutral, somehow both inviting and dismissive, if he wanted it to be.

Steve sifted through the pictures in his memory, flicking from polaroid to polaroid. “Kids. From the war.” A furrow appeared between Tony’s brows. “They were . . . they were really lonely. Lost—everything. They needed—” _A Daddy_.

He looked skyward to ward off emotion.

“Well,” Tony said, still upbeat, casual, but a little strained. “Got any happy stories up there?”

Steve shook his head absentmindedly, but it wasn’t all that far from the truth. Even the happy ones—dancing with his best girl, laughing with his Howlies—were tainted by sadness. “Uh. How happy is—”

“Never mind,” Tony said, almost gently.

Steve stuffed the tissues into a pocket, then sighed deeply. “I haven’t—thought about the war, like that, in so long.”

“Creeps up on you,” Tony said. There was a tone of real understanding, hidden underneath the peppy air. “Just when you think it’s over—one thing takes you right back.” He sifted a hand through the sand idly. “I don’t like sand,” he said, looking at it. “It’s . . . coarse. And rough. And irritating, and it gets everywhere.”

Steve mulled that over. “ _Star Wars?_ ”

Tony smiled. “Knew that movie marathon would pay off someday.” Then he bumped his shoulder against Steve’s. “Hey. Friendly reminder: end of the world already happened. We survived it. We got this, too.”

Steve—sighed. It wasn’t even sad anymore, just—drained. “I want _you_ to be happy, Tony,” he said seriously. “I did this—for _you_. You died. You Snapped your fingers and saved everybody, but you couldn’t handle it. Even I couldn’t handle it,” he added solemnly, and saw Tony’s eyes go quiet, sad, for a moment. “I’m glad it was quick,” he added. Tony nodded in agreement, self-soothing, almost. “I’m glad—that, you weren’t left alone. But mostly, I’m just glad you’re _alive_.”

“I would’ve done it,” Tony said, sad and numb and honest, leaning his shoulder against Steve’s again, more for support than comfort. “If it came down to it, I—”

“I never wanted you to, Tony,” Steve whispered. “I never wanted you to get hurt for this, I would’ve—I _did_. Die for it. That’s what I signed up for. You had a home, a _family_. I had no right to take it away from you.”

Tony breathed in, and out, a few times. Then he said, with amazing reserve: “Pepper’s a hell of a woman. She put up with _me_ for twenty years, you think she can’t handle my untimely death? She’s amazingly, amazingly good at dealing with the worst. And we planned—” Here, his own façade of perfect calm faltered, and Vulcan admitted, “we planned for the end. Just in case. It’s all—there, Steve. In writing, in clear terms. Before we got married, we asked what it would be like if the worst happened, and if it was still worth it to get married. But.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Things change. And maybe I’m the wrong person to get married. Or maybe we both just enjoy what marriage did for our . . . relationship. Wonderful word.”

“You love her.”

Tony drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I have—loved a lot of people. Few as deeply and none as long as Pepper. Few is not a zero number.” Picking up a handful of sand that he supposedly hated—and he would have every reason to, god of deserts, who trekked across the Kunar province in a broken, bleeding suit of armor—Tony narrated, “I don’t say _playboy_ for kicks, that’s—part of me. And that’s a scary part of me. People—they want a commitment, they want a _ring_. Somebody to come home to every night, who can see them airing out the dirty laundry and still want to be there the next day. And Pepper didn’t want to have a kid unless it was—absolutely in writing. _This is our kid_.

“I—kind of agreed. I say kind of because, you know.” He shrugged self-consciously. “That kind of long-term contract is—daunting. But the _our_ , yes, absolutely. Hundred percent. I wanted that in writing, that is _my baby_.” He paused, steadying himself with a deep breath. “She’s a beautifully smart woman because she _knew_ that we would want it in writing, that this is _our_ thing, not just—‘oh, by the way, we have a kid, now.’ And I’m not saying that can’t work. Wedlock isn’t a crime anymore; _you can have_ it all without the paper. But the paper—helps. Like this.” 

He wiggled the wedding ring around, then pried it off carefully. Steve stared. “It doesn’t bite. I only had four panic attacks leading up to the day, that’s not bad.” He replaced it on his hand calmly. “It’s not _good_ , but it’s not bad. It’s—comforting, actually. Knowing I’ve got Pep. I’ve got nothing, I’ve still got Pep.”

Steve tried to wrap his head around the idea of it all, marriage purely as a contract. “I do love her,” Tony insisted fiercely. “She’s a _goddess_ of paperwork, and I mean that completely. She’s amazing at what she does and I really enjoy bragging about my smoking hot wife at parties. It’s just—a lot of perks.”

“But it’s not. . . .” Steve struggled to find a word to encapsulate it all. “Binding,” he settled on.

Tony shook his head. “No,” he said calmly. “Divorce hasn’t been illegal in almost two hundred years. It was always—an option, if we found something better. But it’s—been good. For us. Having this. I don’t know how I would have survived the last five years without her. And Morgan.” His voice went soft as he added, “It was really about Morgan. And having a Mommy and Daddy, who loved her very much. No fuss, no muss.”

Steve sighed. “I don’t want to—”

“You’re _not_ ,” Tony said emphatically. “There’s no plan _to_ wrench,” he insisted. “This was just—I don’t want to call it a _placeholder_ , because that’s a disservice to her and us, but it was—a written non-commitment. That make sense?”

“No,” Steve said, honestly but not meanly.

Tony sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose—he really did look older, and yet, somehow, young; _so_ young, after the hundreds of years Ares felt he had lived—and muffled, “This sounds so much easier in my head.” Then he held up a pinky finger. “Tell me you had this.”

Steve warily locked pinkies with him. “Yes?”

“Okay. Good. That’s about as binding as this.” He squeezed Steve’s pinky, then let go, indicating his _wedding ring_. “No fuss. No muss. Just an agreement, in writing. Look, if I’m _going_ to _hell_ for crimes against God, I might as well be _thorough_.”

“You’re not going to hell,” Steve muttered, so genuinely affronted that Tony’s expression went soft and flattered before he schooled it back into feigned disinterest.

“I don’t think Captain America is legally allowed to tell anyone they’re going to hell.”

“I punched Hitler in the face over two hundred times,” Steve deadpanned. “I’m pretty sure he’s going to hell.”

Tony snorted a laugh, then said, “Point.” Looking Steve over, he pushed himself to his feet and held out a hand. “C’mon. I feel weird enough talking about the missus without the—missus. She’ll miss us. Geddit? Miss-us. Because we’re away.”

Steve clasped his hand, but he mostly pushed himself to his feet. “You’re hilarious,” he said.

Tony kissed his cheek. Steve scowled a little, but there was no anger behind it. “And you love me.”

Steve didn’t indulge him that easily: “Uh-huh.”

“You can say it. I won’t combust.”

“Let’s go talk to her, Tony.”

“What a splendid idea. You’d think I’d have thought of it first.”

Steve steered him up the path. He felt—honestly better, like he really had successfully cried and talked a weight off his chest.

Didn’t mean he would ever goddamn do it again, oh _no_ —the talking part, probably, but the crying part was awful. He could tell his cheeks were still splotchy from the heat, but Morgan was too excited to show him her Hulk bear to notice. “Aww, it’s Clifford,” Tony said, making a show of kissing the bear on the nose. “Hi, Clifford.”

“No! _Hulk bear_ ,” Morgan corrected.

“It’s _not_ Clifford the Big Red Dog?” Tony asked, holding the Hulk bear out of reach.

“NO!” Morgan repeated, giggling as Tony scooped her up in one arm. “Daddy!”

“You’re getting so big,” Tony huffed. “All right. Here you go.” He handed her the Hulk bear so he could hold her in both arms, adding, “You’re going to have to carry Daddy around, soon.”

“You’re too fat,” Morgan said primly.

“I am _skin_ and _bones_ ,” Tony huffed back. “And we don’t call people _fat_ , we call them _beefy_.”

“No!”

Tony blew a raspberry on her cheek, making her giggle. Steve couldn’t help but grin in shared amusement, a father and his daughter, reunited.

“I thought someone died,” Happy complained, stepping into the room and offering Steve an identical miniature tissue without looking away from Tony and Morgan. “We good?”

Tony nodded absently, sighing happily as Morgan rested her cheek on his shoulder. “I was thinking maybe we could get a bit to eat, get some cheeseburgers. How’s that sound?”

“Yes!”

. o .

_One month later_.

“I must say, Captain Rogers,” Tammuz started, “I did not expect to meet you alive again.”

Ares clasped hands with his celestial brother. “I’m glad we can.” While the Greeks and Mesopotamians had coexisted historically, the Mesopotamians had had a profound lead, in culture and development. To stand in the epicenter of Wakanda was to bear witness to that. “Sorry I couldn’t make it here sooner.”

“Do not trouble yourself,” King T’Challa dismissed. “I am always glad to see you. Like this. A casket does not suit you.”

A chill that had nothing to do with the fountain in the grotto swept through Steve. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“You apologize too much.” King T’Challa beckoned him. Princess Shuri stood nearby. _Geshtinanna_ , Ares acknowledged with a deep nod. She smiled back at him. 

_Ares_.

“My people gave much for the world, that drove us to exclusion,” Tammuz said, leading him to the far wall, where huge windows revealed the agrarian kingdom beyond the city. Armored rhinoceroses patrolled the edges, while oxen plowed the interior. “Our losses have been substantial. I have had to make far more apologies than I had ever hoped to.” King T’Challa looked out the window for a long time. Steve did not interrupt him. “Yet I have also been invited to many celebrations,” Tammuz said, with the hint of a smile. “Reborn children. Parents, siblings. Tell me, Captain Rogers—how great would you feel, to mourn for half a decade, and see the face of your loved one again?”

“Captain Rogers.” There was real surprise in General Okoye’s voice.

“Ah. General,” King T’Challa greeted, turning to face her. “Our guest has deemed fit to arrive.”

General Okoye looked from Geshtinanna, who shrugged, then to Tammuz, who offered kindly, “Amid all that has happened, we are perhaps due a hint of the miraculous.”

“How did you survive?” General Okoye asked warily.

Ares said simply, “I didn’t.”

. o .

It took some time to relate the whole truth.

They sat in another, more open grotto eating tender Border lamb and discussing the Restoration. Ares kept his remarks brief but honest. As soon as he finished one bowl, Tammuz offered him another, insisting, “Eat. You are hungry.”

Hours passed. Ares’ brief remarks grew longer, his appetite unwaning. Tammuz had much to say, too—accrediting General Okoye and her counsel for saving his kingdom from total chaos.

They had decided early on to endure eight years of regency before they would formally declare King T’Challa and all Snapped with him lost forever. Wakanda had already suffered high losses on the battlefield before the Snap; losing half its survivors was a blow it was not prepared to endure. The upheaval of a new King would likely have resulted in even more bloodshed, civil war. As the highest-ranking Wakandan left, General Okoye had assumed power by not assuming power, vowing to guard King T’Challa’s throne for eight years and serve as de facto leader until his return.

“This has never been done before,” Tammuz said, as they worked through their third or fourth whole lamb, divided into neat proportions. “Nowhere is it written how to handle the Decimation. In fact, for us, it was mere moments.”

Steve asked seriously, “What was it like?”

“Fire,” King T’Challa said solemnly.

“Like sticking your whole body into an unimaginably hot flame,” Princess Shuri added, leaning forward on her seat. “A burst of heat, and then—you felt nothing. And you knew it was because—”

“You had nothing left to feel with,” King T’Challa finished.

“Terrifying,” Princess Shuri added solemnly. “Knowing that, even dousing the flame—it was too late. You were already burned.”

“Which made it odd,” King T’Challa carried on, “to then appear in a land of great cold. Although perhaps not so odd. What else is the absence of warmth?”

“I could feel a little warmth, just before our return. Like—a candle had been lit.”

“I felt it, too,” King T’Challa acknowledged. “And then—” He snapped his fingers. They all flinched a little. “Restored.”

The silence was long between them.

“It was only a few moments,” King T’Challa went on.

“Seconds, really,” Geshtinanna agreed.

“The same as moments,” Tammuz said, looking at his sister with fondness.

“You could not see anyone,” Geshtinanna said in a soft voice. “You were—alone. It was frightening.”

“To think, ‘This is the afterlife?’” Tammuz agreed. “It was not what our ancestors had promised. It was not what we had seen with our own eyes.”

“You have experience, being lost, for a long time,” Geshtinanna said, addressing Ares directly, now. “I read your story.”

Ares took another bite of lamb. “Sixty-six years, frozen in the arctic,” Princess Shuri went on. “Was it . . . ?”

He heard the unspoken. Swallowing, Ares said simply, “No. It was—” He paused to think about it, really put himself back in the moment. Those memories were as sharp as every memory since the serum, like polaroid pictures. He could feel the ice, the dampness on his skin, the tightness in his chest. It was the cold that killed him, really—no matter how many times his head bobbed below water, he sprung back up, powerfully, but his limbs had begun locking up, his chest tightening, and on the last breath, he simply did not emerge again. He dug, then, as deep into his own memory bank as he could, searching for answers, but there was just a long darkness. “Quiet,” he said at last. “Like . . . waiting to be born.”

“Yes,” Princess Shuri said, leaning back triumphantly. “Exactly.”

. o .

_I can hear you_ , Ares did not say, lying in perfect wait, listening to mortals discuss his fate. They were surprised he had a heartbeat, slow as it was. They were afraid he was suffering. _I don’t feel anything. Why don’t I feel anything?_ He thought they had paralyzed him, or he had had fallen asleep and had yet to wake up and it was a dream. The way they talked made the latter seem more likely—Nazis spoke German, and their acronyms didn’t belong in a makeshift hospital dictionary. He was dreaming.

And then he was wide awake. 

In the wrong world.

. o .

Steve jerked awake. Stared at the ceiling, breath coming fast, trying to understand—

Tony was curled under his armpit, an arm and a leg thrown over him, snoring softly. Steve blinked once, twice, then, slowly, recognized Colonel Rhodes’ guest room.

They needed roots, he decided, shutting his eyes in quiet consternation. They could not begin to rebuild—or even _build_ —a life, flitting from place to place, on the run without being chased.

He gave it a few moments longer, then turned to look at the glowing digital clock. 3:48 a.m.

Too early to rise, yet too late for him to go back to sleep. Carefully, he untangled himself from Tony, gently shoving a pillow into his arms instead. Tony grumbled but didn’t rise, burying his face against the fabric a moment later.

Steve dressed quickly and quietly. Then he escaped into the morning.

Washington, D.C. was always best early in the morning. Watching sun rise over the city was like spring awakening, no matter the time of year. The evaporation of dew and slow blooming of morning life calmed Steve. New York never really slowed down; even at pseudo-rest, crowded skyscrapers jockeyed permanently for limited airspace. With lawn space to spare, D.C. monuments stretched their sleepy shadows across long ponds and wide sidewalks, inviting visitors to look around.

For years, D.C. had been his second home, his first permanent residence outside New York. It had been daunting, at first, getting used to it all, but what part of waking up in the wrong century _hadn’t_ been? The Internet was an amazing tool, a Swiss Army knife of the future, but it hardly prepared him for every little encounter. Like learning a new language, the best strategy was full immersion: jump into the deep end and start swimming.

Colonel Phillips might even be proud of how far scrawny Steve Rogers had come, bounding down the pavement of a modern city he knew like the back of his hand.

 _If you had known who I was, you might’ve put me down sooner_ , Ares mused, thinking about all the people who had crossed swords with him in those slightly fuzzy pre-serum memories. _You wouldn’t have stopped ‘til I was dead. And they’d have called you a hero._

He ran until the sun finally peeked over the horizon. Then he returned home.

“Morning,” Colonel Rhodes said.

“Morning,” Steve echoed, looking over the Colonel. “You’re up early.”

“We don’t sleep in in the Air Force,” Colonel Rhodes sniffed, toying with his keychain. “Think he’ll be up anytime soon?” He nodded towards the guest room.

Steve shrugged a shoulder. “I can check.”

Colonel Rhodes smiled grimly. “Your head, not mine.”

Tony growled at Steve, then made a valiant attempt to become one with the mattress, slinking under the drawn-down covers.

“Think it’s just us,” Steve told Colonel Rhodes, who nodded once.

. o .

“Sam and I used to come here,” Steve said, mulling over a cup of black coffee. “We’d try the flavor of the week. Can you believe,” he said, leaning in a little over the tiny table, “they make a new flavor of coffee every week?”

“Coffee is as coffee does,” Colonel Rhodes replied, sipping a long espresso.

Steve asked about his plan for the day. Colonel Rhodes grimaced. “That bad, huh?” Colonel Rhodes took a short gulp of his drink. “Anything I can do?”

“No,” Colonel Rhodes said, apparently truthfully. “No. It’s . . . .” He gestured idly around at the bustling coffeeshop. “Look around. People, everywhere. We filled the holes in the wall. Now there’s people wondering where they’re supposed to go, now that they’re here.”

Ares nodded. “It’s hard,” he acknowledged.

“Hard doesn’t begin to cover it,” Set said quietly. Set was an ancient god of war; his living counterpart had served _eighteen years_ in the Armed Forces. Steve had served just eighteen months on the Front. “Everybody thinks about the Snap and the Restoration, but a lot changed in five years. People—I know a guy, whose wife received a terminal diagnosis after the Snap. She died two years ago. He came back, she’s still gone.”

It was a rock in Steve’s throat. He drank coffee to work it down. “Not one day is guaranteed to us,” Colonel Rhodes said. “We could die in the middle of our next assignment. Our next sentence.” He finished off his espresso. “That’s why I keep all my stuff organized. At least if I can’t keep my affairs in order, I can make it easier to sort through them. Got rid of most of my personal stuff ages ago. The Air Force—you can’t take it with you, you know?”

Steve nodded. He knew better than most how little would accompany one beyond the dead.

“I don’t think most people understand how sudden the end will come. One day, you will get the diagnosis, you will get in the last car you’ll ever drive. And if you somehow survive, you’ll retrace your steps, asking yourself, what could I have done differently?” Steve watched his face contort, from hypothetical grief to real anguish. It was almost completely in the eyes, his mouth a flat line but the light in his eyes slowly dimming as he said: “Tony and I were in the same caravan, that day, but I was fifty meters ahead of him. His Humvee was blown to pieces; everybody in my van survived. You know what that’s like, Cap? To watch the last day play out?”

Steve stayed silent, giving him room. Colonel Rhodes sighed. “It’s worse than you think,” he went on. “Because you think you’ll have that moment of silence, a chance to process what’s happened. Instead, you’ve got people asking questions you can’t begin to answer and a _job_ to carry out.” 

Set shook his head ruefully, after all these years. 

“Tony almost cost me that job. A dead man almost cost me everything I’d worked for,” he said solemnly. “I wasn’t out on a limb—I was hanging by a _thread_. And I knew he was probably dead. If you don’t find missing persons within the first twenty-four hours, chances are, you are never gonna see their smiling faces again. It’s better to give up hope as soon as you lose sight of them. No man left behind is for the salvageable; once they’re beyond reach, you need to let go and move on. You can always lose more soldiers; you cannot get any back.”

That, Steve understood. All too well. And he understood the exception to the rule, over two hundred soldiers freed from a prison encampment. About a dozen died within a week from their wounds, but the rest went on to die in the War, properly, or, if lucky, return to their families, where they died on American soil of various causes.

“They tell us we’re going to lose people,” Colonel Rhodes said, his voice quiet, not meant to be overheard outside their little circle. “They don’t tell us _how_ to lose people. How we can care about our loved ones at home, exchange letters, do home videos, and then turn around and watch our best guy get his head blown off.”

Steve offered quietly, “I’m sorry.”

“He used to make me _laugh_ ,” Colonel Rhodes said, not talking about Tony. “Class clown. Checked everything twice, thorough, smart guy. Had a wife. He loved talking to her. But he made one mistake. One correctable error. And now he’s just a box in the ground. That was when it was real.”

“I’m sorry, Jim,” Steve repeated.

Colonel Rhodes shook his head. “You can’t save them all. They’re not all gonna be heroes, either. Some just—go. Blink of an eye, rookie mistake. We make mistakes every damn day that don’t cost lives, but when they _do_. . . .”

“Can’t get them out of your head,” Steve said.

Colonel Rhodes held his gaze. “I woke up paralyzed. Because I made a mistake.”

Ares took a drink from his coffee. Colonel Rhodes said, “You play back the tape, I think you’d be hard-pressed to say I didn’t see it coming. That I didn’t know it was going to escalate. You’ve never backed down from a fight, even one that’s personal.”

“Every fight is personal,” Ares submitted, quiet, toneless. “Maybe it’s not your dog in the fight. But it’s somebody’s.”

Colonel Rhodes regarded him. Ares felt the weight of his judgment, of Set’s grim experience. “You’re lucky it was friendly fire,” Set said at last. “Or I think he would’ve killed you on that hill.”

Ares finished his drink. “I should’ve stood down.”

“We all should’ve acted differently.” Ares looked at him sharply, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Then, there, here, now. Life is just an endless series of regrets, if you can’t let go and move on.” Shrugging, Set said, “I’d rather be on your team, if it’s all the same to you. I’m already on his. And I think I know where his loyalty stands.”

“I had an opportunity,” Ares confided in his fellow god of war, “to reset the universe. Play the cards again. I chose not to.” Grimly, he finished, “I won’t take a man from his daughter. Even if it costs me a friend.”

“I know what it’s like to be willing to die for a friend,” Colonel Rhodes decreed. “To give up everything for a chance.” He looked at Ares, younger and brasher, and finished, “Next time . . . let’s _talk_ , first.”

Steve extended his empty cup; Colonel Rhodes clinked his own against it.

. o .

Ares was the god of war. He was excellent at negotiating peace.

Sometimes, it felt like chasing an ever-moving target, one step towards, three more steps away. Other days, it was as easy as reading a letter:

_Dear Steve,_

_Heard you’ve shacked up with Tony Stark. Congratulations. I knew you had it in you. Biggest fish in the sea._

_Me, I’m O-K. I miss my kid sister, which is why I’m writing you. There’s no chance she’ll write back, so I figured, might as well bug my other kid._

_You’re not really a kid, though, and neither am I. You remember those double dates we used to go on? I wish we could go back in time. Be seventeen again. Too young to draft, too smart for our own good. Just young and free._

Ares lounged on the couch, letter in hand, one arm behind his head, one foot on the floor, refusing to entertain the guilt trying to cut into his heart.

_I have to remind myself, the hardest part about starting over isn’t starting over. It’s letting go. Leaving behind everything you were so you can become something new._

_I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I wish I could be the something you remember. He seemed happy._

Steve held his breath for a minute, then exhaled.

_Thanks for coming after me. I know I made your life hell. But you never gave up. I wish I could be the Buck that earned that kind of loyalty. It’s damn impressive. Maybe a little overwhelming._

_Don’t think of this as me running away forever. I just need some space. Somewhere to . . . process._

_Sometimes, it feels like I’ve been asleep for seventy years. And all I’ve got to show for it are these damn picture memories._

_I regret what I did to Stark’s family. Please convey that to him._

_Take care of yourself. We’ll meet again. Maybe get drunk and steal a horse. Could be fun._

_Signed,_

_J.B.B._

Ares flicked his gaze over the letter lazily, memorizing the words. Then he quietly crumpled it up in his fist, letting both rest against his forehead, eyes shut.

He didn’t open his eyes when Tony showed up, sitting on the floor by his feet. They didn’t talk to each other; they didn’t need to. They existed in the same space, at the same time. That alone was beautiful.

. o .

_One year later_.

Time marched on. “And, I was thinking, if I launched myself and did a _double_ flip, right, I could—” Perseus swung back and forth with both hands on the swing’s chains, ignoring Tony’s scowl and admonition to get _down_. Morgan held Tony’s hand and giggled. “Bet I could catch myself in midair,” Peter explained, launching himself, doing a double flip, and landing flat on his face. “I’m okay!”

“Again!” six-year-old Morgan demanded.

“No, that’s how you get a _concussion_ ,” Tony told her.

“Oh, no, I’m fine, Mr. Captain—uh—Mr. Stark, sir,” Peter corrected jubilantly, righting himself like a jack-in-the-box, arms extended. “See?”

Tony sighed. Morgan jumped up and down, still clinging to Tony’s hand. “Again!”

Peter leaped for the still-moving swing. Ares sat on a picnic bench nearby, Themis beside him. “Which one’s yours?” Themis asked dryly.

Ares said, “The tall one with the baby.”

“I’m recording that for future reference,” Tony informed him. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., make a note that I am officially the tall on—” before yelling in alarm as Peter nearly clocked him on the head. “Jesus Christ, Peter, _watch it_ —”

“Jesus Christ!” Morgan parroted.

“No; no, no—”

Shaking his head fondly, Steve turned to Fury and added, “Anyone special in your life?”

“Do I _look_ like I have someone special in my life?” Fury asked, lifting both eyebrows, eyepatch moving a little.

Steve looked him over once, then reached out and plucked a single short thread from his jacket. “Dog?”

“I know a cat,” Fury evaded.

“Right.” Steve suppressed a smile, asking sternly, “What brings you here?” _A mission?_

Affronted, Fury said, “It’s Father’s Day.”

Now Steve’s blank expression was real. “And?”

“Not one card,” Fury growled. “Not even a _call_. Have to do _everything_ myself—”

“I love you, too, Dad,” Tony called out from the field, before _oomphing_ as Peter did what fate decreed and tackled him into the playground turf. “ _Owie_.”

Morgan erupted into giggles. Peter very nearly burst into tears, stammering apologies and alternating between trying to help Tony up and insisting he stay down. Ares and Themis shared a moment of quiet amusement.

“Happy Father’s Day,” Steve told Fury dryly.

“Happy Father’s Day!” Morgan chirped, bouncing up and down. “Again!”

. o .

“We make a good team.”

Ares looked up from the stove, to where Vulcan leaned against the wall, observing him. “I mean, hypothetically, of course, my brains and your brawn, we’re unstoppable,” Vulcan carried on, sauntering into the space. “But—together. Like the old man said,” he teased, draping his arms around Ares’ waist, almost accidentally.

“You’re no spring chicken,” Ares replied.

Vulcan made an affronted noise, then dropped his forehead against the back of Ares’ shoulder. “I’m glad you came,” he admitted, almost out of the blue. Ares went still, one hand reaching for the lid to check on the boiling water. “I—those three days were hell.” He squeezed Ares in a tight hug, trying unsuccessfully to compress the marble he was made from, adding, “I kept—checking. For a pulse. I couldn’t believe I couldn’t find one.”

Ares checked the pot calmly, then turned and nudged Tony away from the stove. “Spirit lives on,” he said quietly. “I was that guy.” _Once_. “Then we—”

“Decohered,” Tony said, nodding, taking Steve’s palm in his own. “Fascinating. When you think about it. It’s like—entropy. But—orderly.” He intertwined their fingers, looking down at them. “We brought it back together.”

“I think it’s more likely we just pulled it apart even more,” Steve corrected.

“No, no. This.” Tony squeezed his hand, then released it, reaching up so he could hook his arms around Steve’s neck, “This is the ground state of my universe. I choose to believe it is the ideal.”

“Never pegged you for an optimist.”

Tony tipped their foreheads together. “Shh.”

Steve shushed.

“You let me . . . be _me_ ,” Tony said, almost awed. “That’s—” He leaned back, shook his head. “That’s beautiful.” Then, nodding at the water, “And that’s boiling.”

Steve kissed his forehead, because he could and he wanted to, and then turned to take care of it.

. o .

Steve still hurt, sometimes.

It wasn’t as often, not in this world. Traveling between realities hadn’t helped anything heal, but even settled in one place, he still woke up stiff and sore and sad, sometimes.

A part of him thought it was punishment, for taking the easy way out, refusing to live with the consequences of their communal actions. _Tony Stark is dead. And he always will be_.

Tony Stark sat on a porch next to him, shoulders close enough to touch. At first, Steve thought he would speak— _Why the long face?_ —but after a brief moment, he settled in, and they waited.

A doe appeared from the tree line. She bowed her head in careful consideration, then approached.

Steve rubbed his hand over her head, enjoying the grounded feel of warm fur and dense life underneath. She was palpably _alive_ , and wild, in a way that tame pets weren’t. 

After a long moment, Tony reached carefully for her, but she bounded off.

Tony sighed. Steve slipped a hand over his knee and squeezed encouragingly.

Tony responded by tangling a hand in his hair and pulling him in for a proper kiss.

It wasn’t the first kiss—the first kiss was lifetimes ago, it seemed, flustered and frustrated as they argued in hushed voices about the best way to reclaim the space stone, and then Tony’s mouth covered his and he forgot to be angry or upset or impatient, rendered speechless for the span of a few heartbeats, attuned to a message he maybe wasn’t meant to read. Tony had flustered, but he had done it deliberately, and he hadn’t tried to apologize for it, pulling back with flaming face to say something Steve instantly forgot as irrelevant.

There were other stolen kisses—moments of quiet desperation, irrepressible curiosity, and the lingering want of something _more_. Ares had tried desperately, in those moments, not to long for more than what he could never have.

But then there was this.

It wasn’t the first kiss, not even in this world. But it reminded Ares of it. 

This quiet, unassuming love. 

With a taste of coffee, and fiery metal underneath.

Tony broke away with a sigh, still gripping his hair like he’d run. 

“I want a deer friend,” Vulcan muttered, sullen yet sweet.

Ares smiled. “Patience,” he suggested.

And everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> CHARACTER INDEX  
> Here there be spoilers!  
> Greek, unless indicated * otherwise
> 
>  **AEACUS (Scott Lang)** : demigod (half-human, half-god; son of Zeus and Aegina), Aeacus was [king of the Myrmidons](https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Aeacus/aeacus.html), an island of ants transformed into humans by his father Zeus.
> 
>  **ASTERION/THE MINOTAUR (Bruce Banner/The Hulk)** : King of Crete, Asterion ("[Asterius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterion_\(king_of_Crete\))") was the human-bull hybrid known as [the Minotaur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minotaur).
> 
>  **ARES (Steve Rogers):** god of war. In line with his [famously brutal](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ares-Greek-mythology) personality, Ares killed Poseidon's son, [Halirrhothius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halirrhothius), for the rape of his daughter, Alcippe. Poseidon brought Ares to trial before the gods, which was held at the Areopagus, literally "[Hill of Ares](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagus)."
> 
>  **ATHENA (Natasha Romanov):** goddess of war and wisdom. Due to Ares' brutal reputation, [Athena became the Greeks' preferred god(dess) of war](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Athena-Greek-mythology), a symbol of rationality and wisdom in combat.
> 
>  **BELLEROPHON (James "Bucky" Barnes):** demigod (son of Poseidon and Eurynome) who famously [stole Pegasus](https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Heroes/Bellerophon/bellerophon.html) and crashed the party at Mount Olympus.
> 
>  **CHRONOS (Stephen Strange):** ["the personification of time."](https://www.greekmythology.com/Other_Gods/Primordial/Chronos/chronos.html) Need I say more?
> 
>  ***GESHTINANNA (Shuri):** sister of Mesopotamian pastoral god Dumuzid (Tammuz), Geshtinanna [shielded her brother from demons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geshtinanna) and mourned his death until his rebirth.
> 
>  **HERMES (Clint Barton):** the fleet-footed god of "[trade, wealth, luck, fertility, animal husbandry, sleep, language, thieves, and travel.](https://www.ancient.eu/Hermes/)"
> 
>  ***HORUS (Sam Wilson):** the ancient Egyptian ["avenger of wrongs,"](https://www.ancient.eu/Horus/) Horus was the falcon-headed sky god who famously quarreled with Set.
> 
>  **PERSEUS (Peter Parker):** another demigod (son of Zeus and Danaë), Perseus was [one of the most famous Greek heroes prior to Heracles](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Perseus-Greek-mythology).
> 
>  ***TAMMUZ (T'Challa):** also known as "[Dumuzid](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tammuz-Mesopotamian-god)," Tammuz was a Mesopotamian god who embodied fertility and life springing forth from nature.
> 
>  **THEMIS (Nicholas Fury):** titaness of wisdom, _Themis_ is literally "[untranslatable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themis)" but amounts to "divine law." She was the first counselor of Zeus and carried the Scales of Justice.
> 
>  ***SET (James "Rhodey" Rhodes):** also known as "Seth" or "Suetekh," Set was the Egyptian god of war, who [famously quarreled with the sky god Horus](https://www.ancient.eu/Set_\(Egyptian_God\)/)\--and lost.
> 
>  ***VULCAN (Tony Stark):** the Roman god of fire (and forge). Vulcan was [notably deformed](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Vulcan) and cast down from Mount Olympus at a young age. Vulcan was granted all attributes of his beloved Greek counterpart, [Hephaestus](https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net/gods/hephaestus/), including metallurgy and craftsmanship.


End file.
